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The life and letters of 
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LIFE AND LETTERS 
OF 
WALTER H. PAGE 


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Sir Edward Grey (now Viscount Grey of Fallodon), Secretary of 
State for Foreign Affairs, 1905-1916 


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FIRE AND LETTERS OF 
We TER HY PAGE 


BY 
BURTON J. HENDRICK 





VOLUME 
I] 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1924 


COPYRIGHT, 1921, 1922, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 


ALL RIGEITS RESERVED 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 


CHAPTER 


XDVE 
XV. 
XVI. 
XVII. 
XVIII. 
XIX. 
XX. 
XXI. 
XXII. 


XXIII. 
XXIV. 
XXV. 


XXVI. 
XXVIT. 


APPENDIX 


INDEX 


CONTENTS 

VOLUME II 
Tue ‘‘ LUSITANIA”? AND AFTER 
THe AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS . 
Dark Days FoR THE ALLIES 
CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 
A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR . 
WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916. 
‘Peace WirHout VICTORY’. 
Tue UNITED STATES AT WarR 


THe Batrour MISSION TO THE UNITED 
STATES. 


PaceE—THE MAN 
A RESPITE AT St. IvES 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO 


FRANCE 
Last Days IN ENGLAND . 


THE END 


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Sie CLWALCGGTOVeu! +.) kee) oo) Seema HOMES DLECe 


FACING PAGE 


Col. Edward M. House. From a painting by P. A. 
Laszlo Ramee lei," ON ae 


The Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minis- 
ter of Great Britain, 1908-1916 . : 


Herbert C. Hoover, in 1914 


A facsimile page from the Ambassador’s letter of 
November 24, 1916, resigning his Ambassador- 
ship . 


Walter H. Page, at the time of America’s entry into 
the war, April, 1917 MPR Re ives ft 


Resolution passed by the two Houses of Parliament, 
April 18, 1917, on America’s entry into the war 


The Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George, Prime Minister 
of Great Britain, 1916— . eae he 


The Rt. Hon. Arthur James Balfour (now the Earl of 
Balfour), Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 
1916-1919 . SB ei CS Bisa i 


Lord Robert Cecil, Minister of Blockade, 1916-1918, 
Assistant amiat! of State for Foreign Affairs, 
1918. igs PS ft A ER Yt 8 


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104 


233 


d44 


Vill LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING PAGE 
General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of 
the American Expeditionary Force in the Great 
Warr) 2225 ele Ment cuca tere a ee Le 


Admiral William Sowden Sims, Commander of 
American Naval lIorces operating in European 
waters during the Great War. . . . . . 360 


A silver model of the Mayflower, the farewell gift 
of the Plymouth Council to Mr. Page. . . 361 


THE 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
OF 
WALTER H. PAGE 


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THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
WALTER H. PAGE 


GHAR TE Rex 
THE “LUSITANIA —AND AFTER 


I 


HE news of the Lusifania was received at the Amer- 

ican Embassy at four o’clock on the afternoon of 
May 7,1915. At that time preparations were under way 
for a dinner in honour of Colonel and Mrs. House; the 
first Lusitania announcement declared that only the ship 
itself had been destroyed and that all the passengers and 
members of the crew had been saved; there was, therefore, 
no good reason for abandoning this dinner. 

At about seven o’clock, the Ambassador came home; 
his manner showed that something extraordinary had 
taken place; there were no outward signs of emotion, but 
he was very serious. The first news, he now informed 
Mrs. Page, had been a mistake; more than one thousand 
men, women, and children had lost their lives, and more 
than one hundred of these were American citizens. It was 
too late to postpone the dinner but that affair was one of 
the most tragic in the social history of London. The 
Ambassador was constantly receiving bulletins from his 
Chancery, and these, as quickly as they were received, he 
read to his guests. His voice was quiet and subdued; 
there were no indications of excitement in his manner or 
in that of his friends, and hardly of suppressed emotion. 

1 


2 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


The atmosphere was rather that of dumb stupefaction. 
The news seemed to have dulled everyone’s capacity for 
thought and even for feeling. If any one spoke, it was in 
whispers. Afterward, in the drawing room, this same men- 
tal state was the prevailing one; there was little denuncia- 
tion of Germany and practically no discussion as to the 
consequences of the crime; everyone’s thought was en- 
srossed by the harrowing and unbelievable facts which 
the Ambassador was reading from the little yellow slips 
that were periodically brought in. An irresistible fasci- 
nation evidently kept everybody in the room; the guests 
stayed late, eager for every new item. When they 
finally left, one after another, their manner was still ab- 
stracted and they said their good-nights in low voices. 
There were two reasons for this behaviour. The first was 
that the Ambassador and his guests had received the de- 
tails of the greatest infamy which any supposedly civilized 
state had perpetrated since the massacre of Saint Barthol- 
omew. The second was the conviction that the United 
States would at once declare war on Germany. 

On this latter point several of the guests expressed their 
ideas and one of the most shocked and outspoken was 
Colonel House. For a month the President’s personal 
representative had been discussing with British statesmen 
possible openings for mediation, but all his hopes in this 
direction now vanished. That President Wilson would 
act with the utmost energy Colonel House took for 
eranted. This act, he evidently believed, left the United 
States no option. “We shall be at war with Germany 
within a month,” he declared. 

The feeling that prevailed in the Embassy this evening 
was the one that existed everywhere in London for several 
days. Emotionally the event acted like an anesthetic. 
This was certainly the condition of all Americans asso- 


THE “LUSITANIA” —AND AFTER 3 


ciated with the American Embassy, especially Page him- 
self. A day or two after the sinking the Ambassador 
went to Euston Station, at an early hour in the morning, 
to receive the American survivors. The hundred or more 
men and women who shambled from the train made a list- 
less and bedraggled gathering. Their grotesque clothes, 
torn and unkempt—for practically none had had the op- 
portunity of obtaining a change of dress—their expres- 
sionless faces, their lustreless eyes, their uncertain and 
bewildered walk, faintly reflected an experience such as 
comes to few people in this world. The most noticeable 
thing about these unfortunates was their lack of interest 
in their surroundings; everything had apparently been 
reduced to a blank; the fact that practically none made 
any reference to their ordeal, or could be induced to dis- 
cuss it, was a matter of common talk in London. And 
something of this disposition now became noticeable in 
Page himself. He wrote his dispatches to Washington 
in an abstracted mood; he went through his duties almost 
with the detachment of a sleep-walker; like the Lusitania 
survivors, he could not talk much at that time about the 
scenes that had taken place off the coast of Ireland. Yet 
there were many indications that he was thinking about 
them, and his thoughts, as his letters reveal, were con- 
cerned with more things than the tragedy itself. He 
believed that his country was now face to face with its 
destiny. What would Washington do? 

Page had a characteristic way of thinking out his prob- 
lems. He performed his routine work at the Chancery 
in the daytime, but his really serious thinking he did in 
his own room at night. The picture is still a vivid one 
in the recollection of his family and his other intimates. 
Even at this time Page’s health was not good, yet he fre- 
quently spent the evening at his office in Grosvenor 


4 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Gardens, and when the long day’s labours were finished, 
he would walk rather wearily to his home at No. 6 Gros- 
venor Square. [He would enter the house slowly—-and his 
walk became slower and more tired as the months went 
by—go up to his room and cross to the fireplace, so ap- 
parently wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hardly 
greeted members of his own family. A wood fire was kept 
burning for him, winter and summer alike; Page would 
put on his dressing gown, drop into a friendly chair, and 
sit there, doing nothing, reading nothing, saying nothing 
—only thinking. Sometimes he would stay for an hour; 
not infrequently he would remain till two, three, or four 
o'clock in the morning; occasions were not unknown when 
his almost motionless figure would be in this same place 
at daybreak. He never slept through these nights, and 
he never even dozed; he was wide awake, and his mind was 
silently working upon the particular problem that was 
uppermost in his thoughts. He never rose until he had 
solved it or at least until he had decided upon a course of 
action. He would then get up abruptly, go to bed, and 
sleep like a child. The one thing that made it possible 
for a man of his delicate frame, racked as it was by anx- 
iety and over work, to keep steadily at his task, was the 
wonderful gift which he possessed of sleeping. 

Page had thought out many problems in this way. The 
tension caused by the sailing of the Dacia, in January, 
1915, and the deftness with which the issue had been 
avoided by substituting a French for a British cruiser, 
has already been described. Page discovered this solu- 
tion on one of these all-night self-communings. It was 
almost two o’clock in the morning that he rose, said to 
himself, “I’ve got it!” and then went contentedly to bed. 
And during the anxious months that followed the Lusitania, 
the Arabic, and those other outrages which have now 


THE “LUSITANIA”’—AND AFTER 5 


taken their place in history, he spent night after night 
turning the matter over in his mind. But he found no 
way out of the humiliations presented by the policy of 
Washington. 

“Here we are swung loose in time,’ he wrote to his son 
Arthur, a few days after the first Lusitania note had been 
sent to Germany, “nobody knows the day or the week or 
the month or the year—and we are caught on this island, 
with no chance of escape, while the vast slaughter goes on 
and seems just beginning, and the degradation of war 
goes on week by week; and we live in hope that the United 
States will come in, as the only chance to give us standing 
and influence when the reorganization of the world must 
begin. (Beware of betraying the word ‘hope’!) It has 
all passed far beyond anybody’s power to describe. I 
simply go on day by day into unknown experiences and 
emotions, seeing nothing before me very clearly and re- 
membering only dimly what lies behind. I can see only 
one proper thing: that all the world should fall to and hunt 
this wild beast down. 

“Two photographs of little Mollie’ on my mantelpiece 
recall persons and scenes and hopes unconnected with the 
war: few other things can. Bless the baby, she couldn’t 
guess what a sweet purpose she serves.”’ 


The sensations of most Americans in London during 
this crisis are almost indescribable. Washington’s failure 
promptly to meet the situation affected them with aston- 
ishment and humiliation. Colonel House was confident 
that war was impending, and for this reason he hurried 
his preparations to leave England; he wished to be in the 
United States, at the President’s side, when the declara- 
tion was made. With this feeling about Mr. Wilson, 


1The Ambassador’s granddaughter. 


6 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Colonel House received a fearful shock a day or two after 
the Lusitania had gone down: while walking in Piccadilly, 
he caught a glimpse of one of the famous sandwich men, 
bearing a poster of an afternoon newspaper. This glaring 
broadside bore the following legend: “We are too proud 
to fight—Woodrow Wilson.’ The sight of that placard 
was Colonel House’s first intimation that the President 
might not act vigorously. He made no attempt to conceal 
from Page and other important men at the American Em- 
bassy the shock which it had given him. Soon the whole 
of England was ringing with these six words; the news- 
papers were filled with stinging editorials and cartoons, 
and the music halls found in the Wilsonian phrase mater- 
ials for their choicest jibes. Even in more serious quarters 
America was the subject of the most severe denunciation. 
No one felt these strictures more poignantly than Presi- 
dent Wilson’s closest confidant. A day or two before sail- 
ing home he came into the Embassy greatly depressed at 
the prevailing revulsion against the United States. “I 
feel,’ Colonel House said to Page, “‘as though I had been 
given a kick at every lamp post coming down Constitution 
Hill.” A day or two afterward Colonel House sailed for 
America. 


II 


And now came the period of distress and of disillusion- 
ment. Three Lusitania notes were sent and were evas- 
ively answered, and Washington still seemed to be mark- 
ing time. The one event in this exciting period which 
gave Page satisfaction was Mr. Bryan’s resignation as 
Secretary of State. For Mr. Bryan personally Page had a 
certain fondness, but as head of the State Department the 
Nebraska orator had been a cause of endless vexation. 
Many of Page’s letters, already printed, bear evidence of 


THE “LUSITANIA’’—AND AFTER 7 
the utter demoralization which existed in this branch of 
the Administration and this demoralization became es- 
pecially glaring during the Lusitania crisis. No attempt 
was made even at this momentous period to keep the Lon- 
don Embassy informed as to what was taking place in 
Washington; Page’s letters and cablegrams were, for the 
most part, unacknowledged and unanswered, and the 
American Ambassador was frequently obliged to obtain 
his information about the state of feeling in Washington 
from Sir Edward Grey. It must be said, in justice to Mr. 
Bryan, that this carelessness was nothing particularly new, 
for it had worried many ambassadors before Page. Readers 
of Charles Francis Adams’s correspondence meet with the 
same complaints during the Civil War; even at the time 
of the Trent crisis, when for a fortnight Great Britain and 
the United States were living on the brink of war, Adams 
was kept entirely in the dark about the plans of 
Washington.’ The letters of John Hay show a similar 
condition during his brief ambassadorship to Great Britain 
in 1897-1898.? 

But Mr. Bryan’s incumbency was guilty of diplomatic 
vices which were peculiarly its own. The “‘leaks”’ in the 
State Department, to which Page has already referred, 
were constantly taking place; the Ambassador would send 
the most confidential cipher dispatches to his superior, 
cautioning the Department that they must be held in- 
violably secret, and then he would pick up the London 
newspapers the next morning and find that everything 
had been cabled from Washington. ‘To most readers, the 
informal method of conducting foreign business, as it is 
disclosed in these letters, probably comes as something of 


1A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861-1865,” edited by Worthington Chauncey 
Ford. Vol. I, p. 84. 

2The Life and Letters of John Hay,” by William Roscoe Thayer. Vol. II, 
p. 166. 





8 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


a shock. Page is here discovered discussing state mat- 
ters, not in correspondence with the Secretary of State, 
but in private unofficial communications to the Presi- 
dent, and especially to Colonel House—the latter at that 
time not an official person at all. All this, of course, 
was extremely irregular and, in any properly organized 
State Department, tt would have been even reprehensible. 
But the point is that there was no properly organized 
State Department at that time, and the impossibility of 
conducting business through the regular channels com- 
pelled Page to adopt other means. ‘There is only one 
way to reform the State Department,” he informed Colo- 
nel House at this time. “That is to raze the whole build- 
ing, with its archives and papers, to the ground, and begin 
all over again.” 

This state of affairs in Washington explains the curious 
fact that the real diplomatic history of the United States 
and Great Britain during this great crisis is not to be found 
in the archives of the State Department, for the official 
documents on file there consist of the most routine tele- 
grams, which are not particularly informing, but in the 
Ambassador’s personal correspondence with the President, 
Colonel House, and a few other intimates. The State 
Department did not have the first requisite of a properly 
organized foreign office, for it could not be trusted with 
confidential information. The Department did not tell 
Page what it was doing, but it apparently told the whole 
world what Page was doing. It is an astonishing fact that 
Page could not write and cable the most important de- 
tails, for he was afraid that they would promptly be given 
to the reporters. 


“TI shall not send another confidential message to the 
State Department,’ Page wrote to Colonel House, 


THE ‘‘LUSITANIA’—AND AFTER 9 


September 15, 1914; “it’s too dangerous. ‘Time and time 
again now the Department has leaked. Last week, | 
sent a dispatch and I said in the body of it, ‘this ts confi- 
dential and under no condition to be given oul or made public, 
but to be regarded as inviolably secret. The very next 
morning it was telegraphed from Washington to the London 
newspapers. Bryan telegraphed me that he was sure it 
didn’t get out from the Department and that he now had 
so fixed it that there could be no leak. He’s said that at. 
least four times before. The Department swarms with 
newspaper men, [ hear. But whether it does or not the 
leak continues. I have to go with my tail between my 
legs and apologize to Sir Edward Grey and to do myself that 
shame and to do my very best to keep his confidence— 
against these unnecessary odds. The only way to be safe 
is to do the job perfunctorily, to answer the questions the 
Department sends and to do nothing on your own ac- 
count. That’s the reason so many of our men do their 
jobs in that way—or one reason and a strongone. Wecan 
never have an alert and energetic and powerful service 
until men can trust the Department and until they can 
get necessary information from it. I wrote the President 
that of course I'd go on till the war ended and all the ques- 
tions growing out of it were settled, and that then he must 
excuse me, if | must continue to be exposed to this danger 
and humiliation. In the meantime, I shall send all my 
confidential matter in private letters to him.” 


Page did not regard Mr. Bryan’s opinions and attitudes 
as a joke: to him they were a serious matter and, in his 
eyes, Bryan was most interesting as a national menace. 
He regarded the Secretary as the extreme expression of 
an irrational sentimentalism that was in danger of under- 
mining the American character, especially as the kind of 


10 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


thought he represented was manifest In many phases of 
American life. In a moment of exasperation, Page gave 
expression to this feeling in a letter to his son: 


To Arthur W. Page 


London, June 6, 1915. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 

: We're in danger of being feminized and fad- 
ridden—grape juice (God knows water’s good enough: 
why grape juice?); pensions; Christian Science; peace 
cranks;  efficiency-correspondence schools; aid-your- 
memory; women’s clubs; co-this and co-t’other and cod- 
dling in general; Billy Sunday; petticoats where breeches 
ought to be and breeches where petticoats ought to be; 
white livers and soft heads and milk-and-water;—I don’t 
want war: nobody knows its horrors or its degradations or 
its cost. But to get rid of hyphenated degenerates per- 
haps it’s worth while, and to free us from ‘isms and soft 
folk. That’s the domestic view of it. As for being 
kicked by a sauerkraut caste—O Lord, give us backbone! 

Heartily yours, 
W. H. P. 


In the bottom of this note, Page has cut a notch in the 
paper and against it he has written: “This notch is the 
place to apply a match to this letter.” 


“Again and ever I am reminded,’ Page also wrote in 
reference to Bryan’s resignation, “of the danger of hav- 
ing to do with cranks. <A certain orderliness of mind and 
conduct seems essential for safety in this short lie. 
Spiritualists, bone-rubbers, anti-vivisectionists, all sort 
of anti’s in fact, those who have fads about education or 
fads against it, Perfectionists, Daughters of the Dove of 
Peace, Sons of the Roaring Torrent, itinerant peace- 


THE ““LUSITANIA’’—AND AFTER 11 


mongers—all these may have a real genius among them 
once in forty years; but to look for an exception to the 
common run of yellow dogs and damfools among them is 
like opening oysters with the hope of finding pearls. It’s 
the common man we want and the uncommon common 
man when we can find him—never the crank. This is 
the lesson of Bryan.”’ 


At one time, however, Mr. Bryan’s departure seemed 
likely to have important consequences for Page. Colonel 
House and others strongly urged the President to call him 
home from London and make him Secretary of State. 
This was the third position in President Wilson’s Cabinet 
for which Page had been considered. The early plans 
to make him Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of 
Agriculture have already been described. Of all cabinet 
posts, however, the one that would have especially at- 
tracted him would have been the Department of State. 
But President Wilson believed that the appointment of an 
Ambassador at one of the belligerent capitals, especially 
of an Ambassador whose sympathies for the Allies were 
so pronounced as were Page’s, would have been an “un- 
neutral’ act, and, therefore, Colonel House’s recommen- 
dation was not approved. 


From Edward M. House 


Roslyn, Long Island, 


June 25th, 1915. 
Dear PAGE: 


The President finally decided to appoint Lansing to 
succeed Mr. Bryan. In my opinion, he did wisely, though 
I would have preferred his appointing you. 

The argument against your appointment was the fact 
that you are an Ambassador at one of the belligerent 


12 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


capitals. The President did not think it would do, and 
from what I read, when your name was suggested I take 
it there would have been much criticism. I am sorry— 
sorrier than I can tell you, for it would have worked ad- 
mirably in the general scheme of things. 

However, I feel sure that Lansing will do the job, and 
that you will find your relations with him in every way 
satisfactory. 

The President spent yesterday with me and we talked 
much of you. He is looking well and feeling so. 

I read the President your letter and he enjoyed it as 
much as I did. 

I am writing hastily, for I am leaving for Manchester, 
Massachusetts, where I shall be during July and August. 

Your sincere friend, 
EK. M. House. 


Tit 


But, in addition to the Lusitania crisis, a new terror now 
loomed on the horizon. Page’s correspondence reveals 
that Bryan had more reasons than one for his resignation; 
he was now planning to undertake a self-appointed mission 
to Europe for the purpose of opening peace negotiations 
entirely on his own account. 


From Edward M. House 


Manchester, Massachusetts, 


August 12th, 1915. 
Dear PAGE: 


The Bryans have been stopping with the X’s. X 
writes me that Bryan told him that he intended to go to 
Europe soon and try peace negotiations. He has Lloyd 
George in mind in England, and it is then his purpose to 
go to Germany. | 


THE ““LUSITANIA’’—AND AFTER 13 


I take it he will want credentials from the President 
which, of course, he will not want to give, but just what 
he will feel obliged to give is another story. I anticipated 
this when he resigned. I knew it was merely a matter of 
time when he would take this step. 

He may find encouragement in Germany, for he is in 
high favour now in that quarter. It is his purpose to 
oppose the President upon the matter of “ preparedness,”’ 
and, from what we can learn, it will not be long before 
there will be open antagonism between the Administra- 
tion and himself. 

It might be a good thing to encourage his going to 
Europe. He would probably come back a sadder and 
wiser man. I take it that no one in authority in England 
would discuss the matter seriously with him, and, in 
France, I do not believe he could even get a hearing. 

Please let me have your impressions upon this subject. 

I wish I could be near you to-day for there are so many 
things I could tell that I cannot write. 

Your friend, 
K. M. Housr. 


To Edward M. House 


American Embassy, London [Undated]. 
DEAR House: 

Never mind about Bryan. Send him over here if you 
wish to get rid of him. He’ll cut no more figure than a 
tar-baby at a Negro camp-meeting. If he had come while 
he was Secretary, I should have jumped off London 
Bridge and the country would have had one ambassador 
less. But I shall enjoy him now. You see some peace 
crank from the United States comes along every week— 
some crank or some gang of cranks. There’ve been two 
this week. Ever since the Daughters of the Dove of 


14 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Peace met at The Hague, the game has become popular 
in America; and I haven’t yet heard that a single one has 
been shot—so far. I think that some of them are likely 
soon to be hanged, however, because there are signs that 
they may come also from Germany. The same crowd 
that supplies money to buy labour-leaders and the press 
and to blow up factories in the United States keeps a good 
supply of peace-liars on tap. It'll be fun to watch Bryan 
perform and never suspect that anybody is lying to him 
or laughing at him; and he'll go home convinced that he’s 
done the job and he'll let loose doves all over the land till 
they are as thick as English sparrows. Not even the 
President could teach him anything permanently. He 
can do no harm on this side the world. It’s only your 
side that’s in any possible danger; and, if I read the signs 
right, there’s a diminishing danger there. 

No, there’s never yet come a moment when there was 
the slightest chance of peace. Did the Emperor not say 
last year that peace would come in October, and again 
this year in October? Since he said it, how can it come? 

The ambitions and the actions of men, my friend, are 
determined by their antecedents, their surroundings, and 
their opportunities—the great deeds of men before them 
whom consciously or unconsciously they take for models, 
the codes they are reared by, and the chances that they 
think they see. These influences shaped Alexander and 
Cesar, and they shaped you and me. Now every mon- 
arch on the Continent has behind him the Napoleonic 
example. ‘Can I do that?” crosses the mind of every one. 
Of course every one thinks of himself as doing it benefi- 
cently—for the good of the world. Napoleon, himself, 
persuaded himself of his benevolent intentions, and the 
devil of it was he persuaded other people also. Now the 
only monarch in Europe in our time who thought he had a 


THE ‘‘LUSITANIA’’—AND AFTER 15 


chance is your friend in Berlin. When he told you last 
year (1914) that of course he didn’t want war, but that he 
was “ready,” that’s what he meant. A similar ambition, 
of course, comes into the mind of every professional 
soldier of the continent who rises to eminence. In Berlin 
you have both—the absolute monarch and the military 
class of ambitious soldiers and their fighting machine. 
Behind these men walks the Napoleonic ambition all the 
time, just as in the United States we lie down every night 
in George Washington’s feather-bed of no entangling 
alliances. 

Then remember, too, that the German monarchy is a 
cross between the Napoleonic ambition and its inheritance 
from Frederick the Great and Bismarck. I suppose the 
three damnedest liars that were ever born are these 
three—old Frederick, Napoleon, and Bismarck—not, I 
take it, because they naturally loved lying, but because 
the game they played constantly called for lymg. There 
was no other way to play it: they had to fool people all the 
time. You have abundant leisure—do this: Read the 
whole career of Napoleon and write down the startling 
and exact parallels that you will find there to what is 
happening to-day. The French were united and patriotic, 
just as the Germans now are. When they invaded other 
people’s territory, they said they were attacked and that 
the other people had brought on war. They had their 
lying diplomats, their corruption funds; they levied money 
on cities and states; they took booty; and they were God’s 
elect. It’s a wonderful parallel—not strangely, because 
the game is the same and the moral methods are the same. 
Only the tools are somewhat different—the submarine, for 
example. Hence the Lusitania disaster (not disavowed, 
you will observe), the Arabic disaster, the propaganda, 
underground and above, in the United States. And 


16 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


there’ll be more. ‘The Napoleonic Wars were about eleven 
years long. I fancy that we shall have war and wars 
from this attempt to dominate Europe, for perhaps as 
long a period. The Balkans can’t be quieted by this war 
only, nor Russia and Italy perhaps. And Germany may 
have a series of earthquakes herself—internal explosions. 
Then Poland and perhaps some of the Scandinavian 
States. Nobody can tell. 3 

I cannot express my admiration of the President’s 
management, so far at least, of his colossal task of leading 
us right. He has shown his supreme wisdom up to this 
point and I have the profoundest confidence in his judg- 
ment. But I hope he doesn’t fool himself about the fu- 
ture; I’m sure he doesn’t. I see no possible way for us to 
keep out, because I know the ignorance and falseness of 
the German leaders. They'll drown or kill more Amer- 
icans—on the sea and in America. They may at last even 
attack one of our own passenger ships, or do something 
that will dramatically reveal them to the whole American 
people. Then, of course, the tune will be called. It’s 
only a question of time; and I am afraid the war will last 
long enough to give them time. An early peace is all that 
can prevent them from driving us at last into war; and I 
can see no chance of an early peace. You had as well pre- 
pare as fast as the condition of public opinion will permit. 

There could be no better measure of the immeasurable 
moral advance that the United States has made over 
Europe than the incredulity of our people. They simply 
can’t comprehend what the Napoleonic legend can do, 
nor the low political morality of the Continent—of Berlin 
in particular. Hence they don’t believe it. We have 
gone on for 100 years working might and main to better 
our condition and the condition of people about us—the 
sreatest effort made by the largest number of people since 


THE “LUSITANIA” —AND AFTER 17 


the world began to further the mood and the arts of peace. 
There is no other such chapter in human history as our 
work for a hundred years. Yet just a hundred years ago 
the Capitol at Washington was burned by—a political 
oligarchy in the freest country of Europe—as damnable 
an atrocity as you will find in history. The Germans 
are a hundred years behind the English in political devel- 
opment and political morality. 

So, let Willum J. come. He can’t hurt Europe—nor 
help it; and you can spare him. Let all the Peace-gang 
come. You can spare them, too; and they can do no harm 
here. Let somebody induce Hoke Smith to come, too. 
You have hit on a great scheme—friendly deportation. 

And Bryan won't be alone. Daughters of the Dove of 
Peace and Sons of the Olive Branch come every week. 
The latest Son came to see me to-day. He said that the 
German Chancellor told him that he wanted peace— 
wants it now and wants it bad, and that only one thing 
stood in the way—if England would agree not to take 
Belgium, Germany would at once make peace! This 
otherwise sensible American wanted me to take him to see 
Sir Edward to tell him this, and to suggest to him to go 
over to Holland next week to meet the German Chancellor 
and fix it up. A few days ago a pious preacher chap 
(American) who had come over to “fix it all up,” came 
back from France and called on me. He had seen some- 
thing in France—he was excited and he didn’t quite make 
it clear what he had seen; but he said that if they’d only 
let him go home safely and quickly he’d promise not to 
mention peace any more—did I think the American boats 
entirely safe?—So, you see, I do have some fun even in 
these dark days. 

Yours heartily, 
W. H. Pace. 


18 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Li 


This letter discloses that Page was pinning his faith in 
President Wilson, and that he still had confidence in the 
President’s determination to uphold the national honour. 
Page was not one of those who thought that the United 
States should declare war immediately after the Lusitania. 
The President’s course, in giving Germany a chance to 
make amends, and to disavow the act, met with his ap- 
proval, and he found, also, much to admire in Mr. Wilson’s 
first Lusitania note. His judgment in this matter was 
based first of all upon the merits of the case; besides this, 
his admiration for Mr. Wilson as a public man was strong. 
To think otherwise of the President would have been a 
creat grief to the Ambassador and to differ with his 
chief on the tremendous issue of the war would have 
meant for Page the severance of one of the most cherished 
associations of his life. The mterest which he had shown 
in advocating Wilson’s presidential candidacy has already 
been set forth; and many phases of the Wilson adminis- 
tration had aroused his admiration. The President’s 
handling of domestic problems Page regarded as a master- 
piece in reconciling statesmanship with practical politics, 
and his energetic attitude on the Panama Tolls had in- 
troduced new standards into American foreign relations. 
Page could not sympathize with all the details of the Wil- 
sonian Mexican policy, yet he saw in it a high-minded 
purpose and a genuine humanitarianism. But the out- 
break of war presented new aspects of Mr. Wilson’s mind. 
The President’s attitude toward the European struggle, 
his conception of “neutrality,” and his failure to grasp 
the meaning of the conflict, seemed to Page to show a lack 
of fundamental statesmanship; still his faith in Wilson 
was deep-seated, and he did not abandon hope that the 


THE ‘LUSITANIA’ —AND AFTER 19 


President could be brought to see things as they really 
were. Page even believed that he might be instrumental 
in his conversion. 

But in the summer and autumn of 1915 one agony 
followed another. The “too proud to fight’’ speech was 
in Page’s mind nothing less than a tragedy. The presi- 
dent’s first Lusitania note for a time restored the Ambas- 
sador’s confidence; it seemed to show that the President 
intended to hold Germany to that “strict accountability” 
which he had threatened. But Mr. Wilson’s course now 
presented new difficulties to his Ambassador. Still Page 
believed that the President, in his own way and in 
his own time, would find a path out of his dilemma 
that would protect the honour and the safety of the 
United States. If any of the Embassy subordinates 
became impatient over the procedure of Washington, he 
did not find a sympathetic listener in the Ambassador. 
The whole of London and of Europe might be resounding 
with denunciations of the White House, but Page would 
tolerate no manifestations of hostility in his presence. 
“The problem appears different to Washington than it 
does to us,” he would say to his confidants. °*We see 
only one side of it; the President sees all sides. If we give 
him all the facts, he will decide the thing wisely.” Eng- 
lishmen with whom the Ambassador came into contact 
soon learned that they could not become flippant or crit- 
ical about Mr. Wilson in his presence; he would resent 
the slightest hostile remark, and he had a way of phrasing 
his rebukes that usually discouraged a second attempt. 
About this time Page began to keep closely to himself, 
and to decline invitations to dinners and to country houses, 
even those with which he was most friendly. ‘The rea- 
son was that he could not meet Englishmen and English- 
women, or even Americans who were resident in England, 


20 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


on his old easy familiar terms; he knew the ideas which 
everybody entertained about his country, and he knew 
also what they were saying, when he was not among them; 
the restraint which his presence necessarily put upon his 
friends produced an uncongenial atmosphere, and the 
Ambassador therefore gave up, for a time, those dis- 
tractions which had ordinarily proved such a delightful 
relief from his duties. or the first time since he had come 
to England he found himself a solitary man. He even 
refused to attend the American Luncheon Club in London 
because, in speeches and in conversation, the members 
did not hesitate to assail the Wilson policies. 

Events, however, eventually proved too strong for the 
most devoted supporter of President Wilson. After the 
Arabic and the Hesperian, Page’s official intimates saw 
siens that the Ambassador was losing confidence in his old 
friend. He would discuss Mr. Wilson occasionally, with 
those secretaries, such as Mr. Laughlin, in whom his con- 
fidence was strongest; his expressions, however, were never 
flippant or violent. That Page could be biting as well as 
brilliant in his comments on public personages his let- 
ters abundantly reveal, yet he never exercised his talent 
for sarcasm or invective at the expense of the White 
House. He never forgot that Mr. Wilson was President 
and that he was Ambassador; he would still defend 
the Administration; and he even now continued to 
find consolation in the reflection that Mr. Wilson was 
living in a different atmosphere and that he had diffi- 
culties to confront of which a man in London could know 
nothing. The Ambassador’s emotion was rather one of 
disappointment and sorrow, mingled with anxiety as to 
the plight into which his country was being led. As to 
his duty in this situation, however; Page never hesi- 
tated. In his relations with his Embassy and with the 


THE “‘LUSITANIA’’—AND AFTER 21 


British world he maintained this non-critical attitude; but 
in his letters to President Wilson and Colonel House, 
he was describing the situation, and expressing his con- 
victions, with the utmost freedom and frankness. In 
both these attitudes Page was consistent and absolutely 
loyal. It was his duty to carry out the Wilson instruc- 
tions and he had too high a conception of the Ambassa- 
dorial office to show to the world any unfavourable opin- 
ions he may have held about his country’s course. His 
duty to his post made it just as imperative that he set 
forth to the President the facts exactly as they were. 
And this the Ambassador now proceeded to do. For the 
mere ornamental dignities of an Ambassadorship Page 
cared nothing; he was wasting his health in his duties and 
exhausting his private resources; much as he loved the 
English and congenial as were his surroundings, the fear 
of being recalled for “disloyalty”? or insubordination 
never influenced him. ‘The letters which he now wrote 
to Colonel House and to President Wilson himself are 
probably without parallel in the diplomatic annals of this 
or of any other country. In them he told the President 
precisely what Englishmen thought of him and of the ex- 
tent to which the United States was suffering in European 
estimation from the Wilson policy. His boldness some- 
times astounded his associates. One day a friend and 
adviser of President Wilson’s came into the Ambassador’s 
office just as Page had finished one of his communications 
to Washington. 

“Read that!’’ the Ambassador said, handing over the 
manuscript to his visitor. 

As the caller read, his countenance displayed the pro- 
gressive stages of his amazement. When he had finished, 
his hands dropped helplessly upon his knees. 

“Ts that the way you write to the President?”’ he gasped. 


Lz THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


‘“‘Of course,” Page replied, quietly. “Why not? Why 
shouldn’t I tell him the truth? That is what I am here 
fOr : 

‘There is no other person in the world who dare talk to 
him like that!” was the reply. 

This is unquestionably the fact. That President Wil- 
son did not like people about him whose views were opposed 
to his own is now no secret, and during the period when his 
policy was one of the great issues of the world there was 
probably no one except Page who intruded upon his solitude 
with ideas that so abruptly disagreed with the opinions of 
the White House. The letters which Page wrote Colonel 
House were intended, of course, for the President him- 
self, and practically all of them Colonel House read 
aloud to the head of the nation. The two men would 
closet themselves in the old cabinet room cn the second 
floor of the White House—that same room in which Lin- 
coln had met his advisers during Civil War days; and here 
Colonel House would quietly read the letters n which Page 
so mercilessly portrayed the situation as it appeared in 
English and European eyes. The President listened im- 
passively, giving no sign of approval or disapproval, and 
hardly, at times, of much interest. In the earlier days, 
when Page’s letters consisted of pictures of English life 
and English men, and colourful descriptions of England 
under the stress of war, the President was vastly enter- 
tained; he would laugh loudly at Page’s wit, express his 
delight at his graphic and pungent style and feel deeply 
the horrors of war as his Ambassador unfolded them. “I 
always found Page compelling on paper,” Mr. Wilson re- 
marked to Mr. Laughlin, during one of the latter’s visits 
to Washington. “I could never resist him—I get more 
information from his letters than from any other single 
source. Tell him to keep it up.” It was during this 


THE “LUSITANIA” —AND AFTER a 


period that the President used occasionally to read Page’s 
letters to the Cabinet, expressing his great appreciation of 
their charm and historical importance. “‘The President 
quoted from one of the Ambassador’s letters to the Cab- 
inet to-day,” a member of the Cabinet wrote to Mrs. 
Page in February, 1915. ‘“‘Some day,’ the President 
said, “I hope that Walter Page’s letters will be published. 
They are the best letters I have ever read. They make 
you feel the atmosphere in England, understand the peo- 
ple, and see into the motives of the great actors.’’’ The 
President repeated this statement many times, and his 
letters to Page show how greatly he enjoyed and profited 
from this correspondence. But after the sinking of the 
Lusitania and the Arabic his attitude toward eas and his 
letters changed. 

He now found little pleasure or satisfaction in the Page 
communications. When Mr. Wilson found that one of his 
former confidants had turned out to be a critic, that man 
instantaneously passed out of his life. And this was now 
Page’s fate; the friendship and associations of forty years 
were as though they had never been. Just why Mr. 
Wilson did not recall his Ambassador is a question that 
has puzzled Page’s friends. He would sometimes refer 
to him as a man who was “‘more British than the British,” 
as one who had been taken completely captive by British 
blandishments, but he never came to the point of dis- 
missing him. Perhaps he did not care to face the public 
scandal that such an act would have caused; but a more 
plausible reason is that Page, despite the causes which he 
had given for irritation, was indispensable to him. Page’s 
early letters had furnished the President ideas which had 
taken shape in Wilson’s policies, and, disagreeable as the 
communications now became, there are evidences that 
they influenced the solitary statesman in the White House, 


24, THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


and that they had much to do in finally forcing Mr. Wil- 
son into the war. The alternative question, as to why 
Page did not retire when he found himself so out of sym- 
pathy with the President, will be sufficiently answered in 
subsequent chapters; at present it may be said that he did 
resign and only consented to remain at the urgent request 
of Washington. In fact, all during 1915 and 1916, there: 
seemed to be a fear in Washington that Page would defi- 
nitely abandon the London post. On one occasion, when the 
newspapers published rumours to this effect, Page received 
an urgent despatch from Mr. Lansing. The message 
came at a time—the date was October 26, 1915—when 
Page was especially discouraged over the Washington 
policy. “‘ Representatives of the press,” said Mr. Lansing, 
“have repeated rumours that you are planning to resign. 
These have been brought to the President’s attention, 
and both he and I have denied them. Still these rumours 
persist, and they cause both the President and me great 
anxiety. We cannot believe that they are well founded. 

“In view of the fact that they are so persistent, we have 
thought it well to inform you of them and to tell you how 
earnestly we hope that they are baseless. We trust that 
you will set both our minds at rest.” 

If Page had ever had any compunction about addressing 
the President in blunt phrases these expressions certainly 
convinced him that he was a free agent. 

Yet Page himself at times had his doubts as to the value 
of this correspondence. He would frequently discuss the 
matter with Mr. Laughlin. “That’s a pretty harsh let- 
ter,’ he would say. “I don’t like to talk that way to the 
President, yet it doesn’t express half what I feel.” 

“It’s your duty to tell the President the real state of 
affairs,” Mr. Laughlin would urge. 

‘“ But do you suppose it does any good?”’ Page would ask. 


THE “LUSITANIA” —AND AFTER 25 


‘Yes, it’s bound to, and whether it does or not, it’s 
your business to keep him informed.” 

If in these letters Page seems to lay great stress on the 
judgment of Great Britain and Europe on American 
policy, it must be remembered that that was his particular 
province. One of an Ambassador’s most important du- 
ties is to transmit to his country the public opinion of the 
country to which he is accredited. It was Page’s place to 
tell Washington what Great Britain thought of it; it was 
Washington’s business to formulate policy, after giving 
due consideration to this and other matters. | 


To Edward M. House 


July, 21.1915; 

Dear House: ve 

I enclose a pamphlet in ridicule of the President. I 
don’t know who wrote it, for my inquiries so far have 
brought no real information. I don’t feel like sending it 
to him. I send it to you—to do with as you think best. 
This thing alone is, of course, of no consequence. But it 
issymptomatic. There is much feeling about the slowness 
with which he acts. One hundred and twenty people 
(Americans) were drowned on the Lusitania and we are 
still writing notes about it—to the damnedest pirates that 
ever blew up a ship. Anybody who knows the Germans 
knows, of course, that they are simply playing for time, 
that they are not going to “come down,” that Von Tirpitz 
is on deck, that they’d just as lief have war with us as not 
—perhaps had rather—because they don’t want any large 
nation left fresh when the war ends. They'd like to have 
the whole world bankrupt. There is a fast growing feeling 
here, therefore, that the American Government is pusillan- 
imous —dallies with ’em, is affected by the German propa- 
ganda, etc., etc. Of course, such a judgment is not fair. 


26 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 
wy 


It is formed without knowing the conditions in the United 
States. But I think you ought to realize the strength of 
this sentiment. No doubt before you receive this, the 
President will send something to Germany that will 
amount to an ultimatum and there will be at least a mo- 
mentary change of sentiment here. But looking at the 
thing in a long-range way, we're bound to get into the war. 
For the Germans will blow up more American travellers 
without notice. And by dallying with them we do not 
change the ultimate result, but we take away from ourselves 
the spunk and credit of getting in instead of being kicked 
and cursed in. We've got to get in: they won't play the 
game in any other way. I have news direct from a high 
German source in Berlin which strongly confirms this. . . . 
It’s a curious thing to say. But the only solution that 
I see is another Lusitania outrage, which would force war. 


Wei lib 


P.S. The London papers every day say that the Presi- 
dent will send a strong note, etc. And the people here 
say, “‘Damn notes: hasn’t he written enough?’’ Writing 
notes hurts nobody—changes nothing. The Washington 
correspondents to the London papers say that Burleson, 
the Attorney-General, and Daniels are Bryan men and 
are holding the President back. 


The prophecy contained in this letter was quickly ful- 
filled. A week or two after Colonel House had received 
it, the Arabic was sunk with loss of American life. 

Page was taking a brief holiday with his son Frank in 
Rowsley, Derbyshire, when this news came. It was tele- 
eraphed from the Embassy. 

“That settles it,” he said to his son. “They have sunk 
the Arabic. That means that we shall break with Ger- 
many and I’ve got to go back to London.” 


THE “LUSITANIA’’—-AND AFTER 27 


To Edward M. House 


American Embassy, London, August 23, 1915. 
Dear House: 

The sinking of the Arabic is the answer to the President 
and to your letter to me. And there'll be more such an- 
swers. You said to me one day after you had got back 
from your last visit to Berlm: “They are impossible.” 
I think you told the truth, and surely you know your Ger- 
man and you know your Berlin—or you did know them 
when you were here. 

The question is not what we have done for the Allies, 
not what any other neutral country has done or has failed 
to do—such comparisons, I think, are far from the point. 
The question is when the right moment arrives for us to 
save our self-respect, our honour, and the esteem and fear 
(or the contempt) in which the world will hold us. 

Berlin has the Napoleonic disease. If you follow Na- 
poleon’s career—his excuses, his evasions, his inventions, 
the wild French enthusiasm and how he kept it up—you 
will find an exact parallel. That becomes plainer every 
day. Europe may not be wholly at peace in five years— 


may be ten. 
Hastily and heartily, wi 
Blab teh 


T have your note about Willum J... . Crank once, crank 
always. My son, never tie up with a crank. TLE, 


To Edward M. House 


London, September 2nd, 1915. 

DEAR HovussE: 
You write me about pleasing the Allies, the big Ally in 
particular. That doesn’t particularly appeal tome. We 


28 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


don’t owe them anything. There’s no obligation. I'd 
never confess for a moment that we are under any obli- 
gation to any of them nor to anybody. I’m not out to 
‘please’? anybody, as a primary purpose: that’s not my 
game nor my idea—nor yours either. As for England in 
particular, the account was squared when she twice sent 
an army against us—in her folly—especially the last time 
when she burnt our Capitol. There’s been no obligation 
since. The obligation is on the other foot. We've set 
her an example of what democracy will do for men, an 
example of efficiency, an example of freedom of oppor- 
tunity. The future is ours, and she may follow us and 
profit by it. Already we have three white English- 
speaking men to every two in the British Empire: we 
are sixty per cent. of the Anglo-Saxons in the world. If 
there be any obligation to please, the obligation is on her 
to please us. And she feels and sees it now. 

My point is not that, nor is it what we or any other 
neutral nation has done or may do—Holland or any other. 
This war is the direct result of the over-polite, diplomatic, 
standing-aloof, bowing-to-one-another in gold lace, which 
all European nations are guilty of in times of peace— 
castes and classes and uniforms and orders and such 
folderol, instead of the proper business of the day. Every 
nation in Europe knew that Germany was preparing 
for war. If they had really got together—not mere 
Hague Sunday-school talk and resolutions—but had 
really got together for business and had said to Ger- 
many, “The moment you fire a shot, we'll all fight 
against you; we have so many millions of men, so many 
men-of-war, so many billions of money; and we'll increase 
all these if you do not change your system and your 
building-up of armies’’—then there would have been no 
war. 


THE “‘LUSITANIA’ —AND AFTER 29 


My point is not sentimental. It is: 


(1) We must maintain our own self-respect and 
safety. If we submit to too many insults, that will in 
time bring Germany against us. We've got to show at 
some time that we don’t believe, either, in the efficacy of 
Sunday-School resolves for peace—that we are neither 
Daughters of the Dove of Peace nor Sons of the Olive 
Branch, and 

(2) About nagging and forever presenting technical 
legal points as lawyers do to confuse juries—the point is 
the point of efficiency. If we do that, we can’t carry 
our main points. I find it harder and harder to get 
answers now to important questions because we ask so 
many unimportant and nagging ones. 

I’ve no sentiment—perhaps not enough. My gushing 
days are gone, if | ever had ’em. The cutting-out of the 
100 years of peace”’ oratory, etc., etc., was one of the 
blessings of the war. But we must be just and firm and 
preserve our own self-respect and keep alive the fear that 
other nations have of us; and we ought to have the cour- 
age to make the Department of State more than a bureau 
of complaints. We must learn to say “No” even to a 
Gawdamighty independent American citizen when he 
asks an improper or impracticable question. Public 
opinion in the United States consists of something more 
than the threats of Congressmen and the bleating of news- 
papers; it consists of the judgment of honourable men on 
courageous and frank actions—a judgment that cannot 
be made up till action is taken. 

Heartily yours, 
W. iH. P. 


30 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


To Edward M. House 


American Embassy, London, Sept. 8, 1915. 

(This is not prudent. It is only true—nothing more.) 
Dear House: 

I take it for granted that Dumba! is going, of course. 
But I must tell you that the President is being laughed 
at by our best friends for his slowness in action. I hardly 
ever pick up a paper without seeing some sarcastic re- 
mark. I don’t mean they expect us to come into the war. 
They only hoped we would be as good as our word— 
would regard another submarine attack on a ship carry- 
ing Americans as an unfriendly act and would send Berns- 
torff home. Yet the Arabic and now the Hesperian have 
had no effect in action. Bernstorff’s personal nole lo 
Lansing,’ even as far as tt goes, does not bind his Government. 

The upshot of all this is that the President is fast losing 
in the minds of our best friends here all that he gained 
by his courageous stand on the Panama tolls. They feel 
that if he takes another insult—keeps taking them—and 
is satisfied with Bernstorff’s personal word, which is 
proved false in four days—he’ll take anything. And the 
British will pay less attention to what we say. That’s 
inevitable. If the American people and the President 
accept the Arabic and the Hesperian and do nothing to 
Dumba till the Government here gave out his letter, 
which the State Department had (and silently held) for 





10On September 6th, certain documents seriously compromising Dr. Constantin 
Dumba, Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to the United States, were published in 
the British press. They disclosed that Dr. Dumba was fomenting strikes in the 
United States and conducting other intrigues. The American Government gave 
Dr. Dumba his passports on September 17th. 


“On August 26th, Count Bernstorff gave a pledge to the United States Govern- 
ment, that, in future, German submarines would not attack liners without warn- 
ing. This promise was almost immediately violated. 


THE “LUSITANIA” —AND AFTER AG 


several days—then nobody on this side the world will 
pay much heed to anything we say hereafter. 

This, as I say, doesn’t mean that these (thoughtful) 
people wish or expect us to go to war. They wish only 
that we'd prove ourselves as good as the President’s word. 
That’s the conservative truth; we’re losing influence 
more rapidly than I supposed it were possible. 

Dumba’s tardy dismissal will not touch the main 
matter, which is the rights of neutrals at sea, and keeping 
our word in action. 

Yours sincerely, 
Webb: 


P.S. They say it’s Mexico over again—watchful waiting 
and nothing doing. And the feeling grows that Bryan has 
really conquered, since his programme seems to prevail. 


To Edward M. House 


London, Tuesday night, Sept. 8, 1915. 
Dear House: 


The Germans seem to think it a good time to try to 
feel about for peace. They have more to offer now than 
they may have again. That’s all. A man who seriously 
talks peace now in Paris or in London on any terms that 
the Germans will consider, would float dead that very 
night in the Seine or in the Thames. The Germans have 
for the time being “done-up” the Russians; but the 
French have shells enough to plough the German trenches 
day and night (they’ve been at it for a fortnight now); 
Joffre has been to see the Italian generalissimo; and the 
English destroy German submarines now almost as fast 
as the Germans send them out. I am credibly told that 
several weeks ago a group of Admiralty men who are in 


a2 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


the secret had a little dinner to celebrate the destruction 
of the 50th submarine. 

While this is going on, you are talking on your side of 
the water about a change in German policy! The only 
change is that the number of submarines available be- 
comes smaller and smaller, and that they wish to use 
Uncle Sam’s broad, fat back to crawl down on when 
they have failed. 

Consequently, they are laughing at Uncle Sam here— 
it comes near to being ridicule, in fact, for seeming to 
jump at Bernstorff’s unfrank assurances. And, as I 
have telegraphed the President, English opinion is— 
well, it is very nearly disrespectful. Men say here (I 
mean our old friends) that with no disavowal of the 
Lusitania, the Falaba, the Gulflight, or the Arabic or of the 
Hesperian, the Germans are “stuffing’’ Uncle Sam, that 
Uncle Sam is in the clutches of the peace-at-any-price 
public opinion, that the United States will suffer any 
insult and do nothing. I hardly pick up a paper that 
does not have a sarcastic paragraph or cartoon. We are 
on the brink of convincing the English that we'll not 
act, whatever the provocation. By the English, I do 
not mean the lighter, transitory public opinion, but I 
mean the thoughtful men who do not wish us or expect 
us to firea gun. They say that the American democracy, 
since Cleveland’s day, has become a mere agglomeration 
of different races, without national unity, national aims, 
and without courage or moral qualities. And (I deeply 
regret to say) the President is losing here the high esteem 
he won by his Panama tolls repeal. They ask, why on 
earth did he raise the issue if under repeated provocation 
he is unable to recall Gerard or to send Bernstorff home? 
The Hesperian follows the Arabic; other “liners” will 
follow the Hesperian, if the Germans have submarines. 


THE “LUSITANIA —AND AFTER 33 


And, when Sackville-West! was promptly sent home for 
answering a private citizen’s inquiry about the two political 
parties, Dumba is (yet awhile) retained in spite of a far 
graver piece of business. There isa tone of sad disappoint- 
ment here—not because the most thoughtful men want us 
in the war (they don’t), but because for some reason, which 
nobody here understands, the President, having taken a 
stand, seems unable to do anything. 

All this is a moderate interpretation of sorrowful 
public opinion here. And the result will inevitably be 
that they will pay far less heed to anything we may here- 
after say. In fact men now say here every day that the 
American democracy has no opinion, can form no opinion, 
has no moral quality, and that the word of its President 
never gets as far as action even of the mildest form. The 
atmosphere is very depressing. And this feeling has ap- 
parently got beyond anybody’s control. Ive even heard 
this said: “‘The voice of the United States is Mr. Wilson’s: 
its actions are controlled by Mr. Bryan.” 

So, you see, the war will go ona long long time. So far as 
English opinion is concerned, the United States is useful 
to make ammunition and is now thought of chiefly in 
this connection. Less and less attention is paid to what 
we say. Even the American telegrams to the London 
papers have a languid tone. 

Yet recent revelations have made it clearer than ever 
that the same qualities that the English accuse us of 
having are in them and that these qualities are directly 
to blame for this war. I recall that when I was in Ger- 
many a few weeks, six years ago, I became convinced that 


1Sir Lionel Sackville-West was British Minister to the United States from 1881 
to 1888. In the latter year a letter was published which he had written to an 
American citizen of British origin, the gist of which was that the reelection of 
President Cleveland would be of advantage to British interests. For this gross 
interference in American domestic affairs, President Cleveland immediately 
handed Sir Lionel his passports. The incident ended his diplomatic career. 


34. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Germany had prepared to fight England; I didn’t know 
when, but I did know that was what the war-machine had 
in mind. Of course, [ had no opportunities to find out 
anything in particular. You were told practically that 
same thing by the Kaiser, before the war began. “We 
are ready,’ said he. Of course the English feared it and 
Sir Edward put his whole life into his effort to prevent it. 
The day the war began, he told me with tears that it 
seemed that his life had been wasted—that his life work 
had gone for naught.—Nobody could keep from won- 
dering why England didn’t 

(Here comes a parenthesis. Word came to me a little 
while ago that a Zeppelin was on its way to London. 
Such a remark doesn’t arouse much attention. But just 
as I had finished the fifth line above this, Frank and Mrs. 
Page came in and challenged me to play a game of cards 
before we should go to bed. We sat down, the cards 
were dealt, and bang! bang!—with the deep note of an 
explosion. <A third, a fourth shot. We went into the 
street. There the Zeppelin was revealed by a searchlight 
—sailing along. I think it had probably dropped its 
bombs; but the aircraft guns were cracking away at it. 
Some of them shot explosive projectiles to find the range. 
Now and then one such explosive would almost reach the 
Zeppelin, but it was too high for them and it sailed away, 
the air guns doing their ineffectual best. I couldn’t see 
whether airplanes were trying to shoot it or not. The 
searchlight revealed the Zeppelin but nothing else.— 
While we were watching this battle in the air, the maids 
came down from the top of the house and went into the 
cellar. I think they’ve already gone back. You can’t 
imagine how little excitement it caused. It produces 
less fright than any other conceivable engine of war. 

We came back as soon as the Zeppelin was out of sight 





THE ‘LUSITANIA’ —AND AFTER 35 


and the firing had ceased; we played our game of cards; 
and here I am writing you the story—all within about 
half an hour.—There was a raid over London last 
night, too, wherein a dozen or two women and children 
and a few men were killed. I haven’t the slightest idea 
what harm this raid to-night has done. For all I know 
it may not be all done. But of all imaginable war- 
experiences this seems the most futile. It interrupted a 
game of cards for twenty minutes!) 

Now—to go on with my story: I have wondered ever 
since the war began why the Allies were not better pre- 
pared—especially England on land. England has just 
one big land gun—no more. Now it has turned out, as 
you have doubtless read, that the British Government 
were as good as told by the German Government that 
Germany was going to war pretty soon—this in 1912 when 
Lord Haldane’ was sent to make friends with Germany. 

The only answer he brought back was a proposition 
that England should in any event remain neutral—stand 
aside while Germany whipped Russia and France. This 
insulting proposal was kept secret till the other day. 
Now, why didn’t the British Cabinet inform the people 
and get ready? They were afraid the English people 
wouldn’t believe it and would accuse them of fomenting 
war. ‘The English people were making money and pur- 
suing their sports. Probably they wouldn't have be- 
lieved it. So the Liberal Cabinet went on in silence, 
knowing that war was coming, but not exactly when it 
was coming, and they didn’t make even a second big gun. 





1In this passage the Ambassador touches on one of the bitterest controversies 
of the war. In order completely to understand the issues involved and to obtain 
Lord Haldane’s view, the reader should consult the very valuable book recently 
published by Lord Haldane: ‘“‘ Before the War.” Chapter II tells the story of 
Lord Haldane’s visit to the Kaiser, and succeeding chapters give the reasons why 
the creation of a huge British army in preparation for the war was not a simple 
matter. 


36 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Now here was the same silence in this “‘democracy”’ 
that they now complain of in ours. Rather an interest- 
ing and discouraging parallel—isn’t it? Public opinion 
has turned Lord Haldane out of office because he didn’t 
tell the public what he declares they wouldn’t have be- 
lieved. If the English had raised an army in 1912, and 
made a lot of big guns, Austria would not have trampled 
Serbia in the earth. There would have been no war 
now; and the strong European Powers might have made 
then the same sort of protective peace-insurance com- 
bine that they will try to make after this war is ended. 
Query: A democracy’s inability to acl—how much is this 
apparently inherent quality of a democracy to blame for 
this war and for—other things? 

When I am asked every day “Why the United States 
doesn’t do something—send Dumba and_ Bernstorff 
home?’’—Well, it is not the easiest question in the world 


to answer. 
Yours heartily, 


WP: 
P. S. This is the most comical of all worlds: While I 
was writing this, 1t seems the maids went back upstairs 
and lighted their lights without pulling their shades down 
—they occupy three rooms, in front. The doorbell rang 
furiously. Here were more than half a dozen policemen 
and special constables—must investigate! “One light 
would be turned on, another would go out; another one 
on!’’—etc., etc. Frank tackled them, told ’em it was only 
the maids going to bed, forgetting to pull down the shades. 
Spies and signalling were in the air! So, in the morning, 
I’ll have to send over to the Foreign Office and explain. 
The Zeppelin did more “frightfulness”’ than I had sup- 
posed, after all. Doesn't this strike you as comical? 
Ws be 


THE “LUSITANIA” —AND AFTER ar 


Friday, September 10, 1915. 

P.S. The news is just come that Dumba is dismissed. 
That will clear the atmosphere—a little, but only a little. 
Dumba committed a diplomatic offence. The German 
Government has caused the death of United States citi- 
zens, has defied us, has declared it had changed its policy 
and yet has gone on with the same old policy. Besides, 
Bernstorff has done everything that Dumba did except 
employ Archibald, which was a mere incident of the 
game. ‘The President took a strong stand: they have 
disregarded it—no apology nor reparation for a single 
boat that has been sunk. Now the English opinion of 
the Germans is hardly a calm, judicial opinion—of course 
not. There may be facts that have not been made 
known. There must be good reasons that nobody here 
can guess, why the President doesn’t act in the long suc- 
cession of German acts against us. But I tell you with 
all solemnity that British opinion and the British Govern- 
ment have absolutely lost their respect for us and their former 
high estimate of the President. And that former respect is 
gone for good unless he acts now very quickly.! They will 
pay nothing more than formal and polite attention to 
anything we may hereafter say. This is not resentful. 
They don’t particularly care for us to get into the war. 
Their feeling (I mean among our best old friends) is not 
resentful. It is simply sorrowful. They had the highest 
respect for our people and our President. The Germans 
defy us; we sit in silence. They conclude here that we'll 
submit to anything from anybody. We'll write strong 
notes—nothing more. 

I can’t possibly exaggerate the revulsion of feeling. 
Members of the Government say (in private, of course) 
that we'll submit to any insult. The newspapers refuse 


1The italics are Page’s. 


38 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


to publish articles which attempt to make the President’s 
silence reasonable. “It isn’t defensible,’ they say, 
‘“‘and they would only bring us thousands of insulting 
letters from our readers.”” I can’t think of a paper nor 
of a man who has a good word to say for us—except, 
perhaps, a few Quaker peace-at-any-price people. And 
our old friends are disappointed and sorrowful. They 
feel that we have dropped out of a position of influence 
in the world. 

I needn’t and can’t write more. Of course there are 
more important things than English respect. But the 
English think that every Power has lost respect for us— 
the Germans most of all. And (unless the President acts 
very rigorously and very quickly) we'll have to get along 
a long time without British respect. 


W. H. P. 


P. S. The last Zeppelin raid—which interrupted the 
game of cards—killed more than twenty persons and de- 
stroyed more than seven million dollars’ worth of private 
business property—all non-combatants’! 


Wiehiigtes 


To Edward M. House 


21st of September, 1915. 
Dear House: 


The insulting cartoon that I enclose (destroy it with- 
out showing it) is typical of, I suppose, five hundred that 
have appeared here within a month. ‘This represents the 
feeling and opinion of the average man. They say we 
wrote brave notes and made courageous demands, to 
none of which a satisfactory reply has come, but only 
more outrages and no guarantee for the future. Yet 
we will not even show our displeasure by sending Berns- 


THE “LUSITANIA” —AND AFTER 39 


torff home. We've simply “gone out,” like a snuffed 
candle, in the regard and respect of the vast volume of 
British opinion. (The last Punch had six ridiculing 
allusions to our “ fall.’’) 

It’s the loneliest time I’ve had in England. There’s a 
tendency to avoid me. 

They can’t understand here the continued declaration 
in the United States that the British Government is 
trying to take our trade—to use its blockade and navy 
with the direct purpose of giving British trade profit out 
of American detentions. Of course, the Government had 
no such purpose and has done no such thing—with any 
such purpose. It isn’t thinking about trade but only 
about war. 

The English think they see in this the effect on our 
Government and on American opinion of the German 
propaganda. I have had this trade-accusation investi- 
gated half a dozen times—the accusation that this Gov- 
ernment is using its military power for its own trade ad- 
vantage to our detriment: it simply isn’t true. They stop 
our cargoes, not for their advantage, but wholly to keep 
things from the enemy. Study our own trade reports. 

In a word, our importers are playing (so the English 
think) directly into the hands of the Germans. So mat- 
ters go on from bad to worse. 

Bryce’ is very sad. He confessed to me yesterday 
the utter hopelessness of the two people’s ever under- 
standing one another. 

‘The military situation is very blue—very blue. The 
general feeling is that the long war will begin next March 
and end—nobody dares predict. 

WEP: 


1Viscount Bryce, author of “The American Commonwealth” and British Am- 
bassador to the United States, 1907-1913. 





40 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


P. S. There’s not a moral shadow of a doubt (1) that 
the commander of the submarine that sunk the Arabic is 
dead—although he makes reports to his government! 
nor (2) that the Hesperian was torpedoed. The State 
Department has a piece of the torpedo. 


= 
The letters which Page sent directly to the President 
were just as frank. “Incidents occur nearly every day,” 


he wrote to President Wilson in the autumn of 1915, 
“which reveal the feeling that the Germans have taken 
us in. Last week one of our naval men, Lieutenant 
McBride, who has just been ordered home, asked the 
Admiralty if he might see the piece of metal found on 
the deck of the Hesperian. Contrary to their habit, the 
British officer refused. ‘Take my word for it,’ he said. 
‘She was torpedoed. Why do you wish to investigate? 
Your country will do nothing—will accept any excuse, 
any insult and—do nothing.’ When McBride told me 
this, | went at once to the Foreign Office and made a 
formal request that this metal should be shown to our 
naval attaché, who (since Symington is with the British 
fleet and McBride has been ordered home) is Lieutenant 
Towers. ‘Towers was sent for and everything that the 
Admiralty knows was shown to him and I am send- 
ing that piece of metal by this mail. But to such a pass 
has the usual courtesy of a British naval officer come. 
There are many such instances of changed conduct. 
They are not hard to endure nor to answer and are of no 
consequence in themselves but only for what they denote. 
They’re a part of war’s bitterness. But my mind runs 
ahead and I wonder how Englishmen will look at this 
subject five years hence, and it runs afield and I wonder 
how the Germans will regard it. A sort of pro-German 


THE “LUSITANIA —-AND AFTER 4] 


American newspaper correspondent came along the other 
day from the German headquarters; and he told me that 
one of the German generals remarked to him: *War with 
America? Ach no! Not war. If trouble should come, 
we'd send over a platoon of our policemen to whip your 
little army.’ (He didn’t say just how he’d send ’em.)” 


To the President 


American Embassy, London, Oct. 5, 1915. 
Dear Mr. PRESIDENT: 

[ have two letters that I have lately written to you but 
which I have not sent because they utterly lack good 
cheer. After reading them over, I have not liked to send 
them. Yet I should fail of my duty if I did not tell you 
bad news as well as good. 

The high esteem in which our Government was held 
when the first Lusitania note to Germany was sent seems 
all changed to indifference or pity—not hatred or 
hostility, but a sort of hopeless and sad pity. That ship 
was sunk just five months ago; the German Government 
(or its Ambassador) is yet holding conversations about 
the principle involved, making “concessions” and prom- 
ises for the future, and so far we have done nothing to 
hold the Germans to accountability.’ In the meantime 
their submarine fleet has been so reduced that probably 
the future will take care of itself and we shall be used as a 
sort of excuse for their failure. This is what the English 
think and say; and they explain our failure to act by con- 
cluding that the peace-at-any-price sentiment dominates 
the Government and paralyzes it. They have now, I 
think, given up hope that we will ever take any action. 





1In a communication sent February 10, 1915, President Wilson warned the 
German Government that he would hold it to a “strict accountability” for the 
loss of American lives by illegal submarine attack. 


A2 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


So deeply rooted (and, I fear, permanent) is this feeling 
that every occurrence is made to fit into and to strengthen 
this supposition. When Dumba was dismissed, they said: 
‘“Dumba, merely the abject tool of German intrigue. 
Why not Bernstorff?’? When the Anglo-French loan 
was oversubscribed, they said: “The people’s sympathy 
is most welcome, but their Government is paralyzed.” 
Their respect has gone——at least for the time being. 

It is not that they expect us to go to war: many, in fact, 
do not wish us to. They expected that we would be as 
good as our word and hold the Germans to accountability. 
Now I fear they think little of our word. I shudder to 
think what our relations might be if Sir Edward Grey 
were to yield to another as Foreign Minister, as, of course, 
he must yield at some time. 

The press has less to say than it had a few weeks ago. 
Punch, for instance, which ridiculed and pitied us in six 
cartoons and articles in each of two succeeding numbers, 
entirely forgets us this week. But they’ve all said their 
say. Iam, in a sense, isolated—lonely in a way that I 
have never before been. I am not exactly avoided, I 
hope, but I surely am not sought. They have a polite 
feeling that they do not wish to offend me and that to 
make sure of this the safest course is to let me alone. 
There is no mistaking the great change in the attitude of 
men I know, both in official and private life. 

It comes down and comes back to this—that for five 
months after the sinking of the Lusitania the Germans are 
yet playing with us, that we have not sent Bernstorff 
home, and hence that we will submit to any rebuff or any 
indignity. It is under these conditions—under this judg- 
ment of us—that we now work—the English respect for 





‘A reference to the Anglo-French loan for $500,000,000, placed in the United 
States in the autumn of 1915, 


THE ““LUSITANIA’ —-AND AFTER 43 


our Government indefinitely lessened and instead of the 
old-time respect a sad pity. I cannot write more. 
Heartily yours, 
WALTER H. Pace. 


“T have authoritatively heard,” Page writes to President 
Wilson in early September, “of a private conversation be- 
tween a leading member of the Cabinet and a group of im- 
portant officials all friendly to us in which all sorrowfully 
expressed the opinion that the United States will submit 
to any indignity and that no effect is now to be hoped for 
from its protests against unlawful submarine attacks or 
against anything else. ‘The inactivity of our Government, 
or its delay, which they assume is the same as inactivity, 
is attributed to domestic politics or to the lack of national, 
consciousness or unity. 

‘No explanation has appeared in the British press of 
our Government’s inactivity or of any regret or promise of 
reparation by Germany for the sinking of the Lusitania, 
the Falaba, the Gulflight, the Nebraskan, the Arabic, or 
the Hesperian, nor any explanation of a week’s silence 
about the Dumba letter; and the conclusion is drawn 
that, in the absence of action by us, all these acts have 
been practically condoned. 

“T venture to suggest that such explanations be made 
public as will remove, if possible, the practically unanimous 
conclusion here that our Government will permit these and 
similar future acts to be explained away. I am surprised 
almost every hour by some new evidence of the loss of re- 
spect for our Government, which, since the sinking of the 
Arabic, has become so great as to warrant calling it a com- 
plete revulsion of English feeling toward the United States. 
There is no general wish for us to enter the war, but there 
is genuine sorrow that we are thought to submit to any 


44. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


indignity, especially after having taken a firm stand. I 
conceive I should be lacking in duty if I did not report 
this rapid and unfortunate change in public feeling, which 
seems likely to become permanent unless facts are quickly 
made public which may change it.” 


There are many expressions of such feelings in Page’s 
letters of this time. They brought only the most per- 
functory acknowledgment from the White House. On 
January 3, 1916, Page sent the President a mass of clip- 
pings from the British press, all criticizing the Wilson Ad- 
ministration in unrestrained terms. In his comment on 
these, he writes the President: 

‘* Public opinion, both official and unofficial, is expressed 
by these newspaper comments, with far greater restraint 
than it is expressed in private conversation. Ridicule of 
the Administration runs through the programmes of the 
theatres; it inspires hundreds of cartoons; it is a staple of 
conversation at private dmners and in the clubs. The 
most serious class of Englishmen, including the best 
friends of the United States, feel that the Administration’s 
reliance on notes has reduced our Government to a third- 
or fourth-rate power. ‘There is even talk of spheres of 
German influence in the United States as m China. No 
government could fall lower in English opinion than we 
shall fall if more notes are sent to Austria or to Germany. 
The only way to keep any shred of English respect is the 
immediate dismissal without more parleying of every 
German and Austrian official at Washington. Nobody 
here believes that such an act would provoke war. 

“IT can do no real service by mincing matters. My 
previous telegrams and letters have been purposely re- 
strained as this one is. We have now come to the part- 
ing of the ways. If English respect be worth preserving 


THE “LUSITANIA’’—AND AFTER 45 


at all, it can be preserved only by immediate action. 
Any other course than immediate severing of diplomatic 
relations with both Germany and Austria will deepen the 
English opinion into a conviction that the Administra- 
tion was insincere when it sent the Lusitania notes and 
that its notes and protests need not be taken seriously on 
any subject. And English opinion is allied opinion. The 
Italian Ambassador! said to me, ‘What has happened? 
The United States of to-day is not the United States I 
knew fifteen years ago, when I lived in Washington.’ 
French officers and members of the Government who 
come here express themselves even more strongly than 
do the British. The British newspapers to-day publish 
translations of ridicule of the United States from German 
papers.” 


To the President 


London, | 
January 5, 1916. 
Dear Mr. PRESIDENT: 

I wish—an impossible thing of course—that some sort 
of guidance could be given to the American correspondents 
of the English newspapers. Almost every day they tele- 
eraph about the visits of the Austrian Chargé or the 
German Ambassador to the State Department to assure 
Mr. Lansing that their governments will of course make a 
satisfactory explanation of the latest torpedo-act in the 
Mediterranean or to “take one further step in reaching a 
satisfactory understanding about the Lusitania.” ‘They 
usually go on to say also that more notes are in prepara- 
tion to Germany or to Austria. ‘The impression made up- 
on the European mind is that the German and Austrian 
officials in Washington are leading the Administration on 


1The Marquis Imperiali. 


46 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


to endless discussion, endless notes, endless hesitation. 
Nobody in Europe regards their pledges or promises as 
worth anything at all: the Arabic follows the Lusitania, 
the Hesperian follows the Arabic, the Persia follows the 
Ancona. “Still conferences and notes continue,’ these 
people say, “proving that the American Government, 
which took so proper and high a stand in the Lusitania 
notes, is paralyzed—in a word is hoodwinked and ‘worked’ 
by the Germans.” And so long as these diplomatic 
representatives are permitted to remain in the United 
States, “to explain,” “to parley” and to declare that the 
destruction of American lives and property is disavowed 
by their governments, atrocities on sea and land will of 
course continue; and they feel that our Government, by 
keeping these German and Austrian representatives in 
Washington, condones and encourages them and _ their 
governments. . 

This is a temperate and even restrained statement of the 
English feeling and (as far as I can make out) of the whole 
European feeling. 

It has been said here that every important journal 
published in neutral or allied European countries, daily, 
weekly, or monthly, which deals with public affairs, has 
expressed a loss of respect for the United States Govern- 
ment and that most of them make continuous severe 
criticisms (with surprise and regret) of our failure by ac- 
tion to live up to the level of our Lusitania notes. I had 
(judiciously) two American journalists, resident here— 
men of judgment and character—to inquire how true this 
declaration is. After talking with neutral and allied 
journalists here and with men whose business it is to read 
the journals of the Continent, they reported that this 
declaration is substantially true—that the whole Kuropean 
press (outside Germany and its allies) uses the same tone 


THE “LUSITANIA” —AND AFTER AZ 


toward our Government that the English press uses— 
to-day, disappointment verging on contempt; and many 
of them explain our keeping diplomatic intercourse with 
Germany by saying that we are afraid of the German vote, 
or of civil war, or that the peace-at-any-price people really 
rule the United States and have paralyzed our power to 
act—even to cut off diplomatic relations with governments 
that have insulted and defied us. 

Another (similar) declaration is that practically all men 
of public influence in England and in the European allied 
and neutral countries have publicly or privately expressed 
themselves to the same effect. The report that I have 
about this is less definite than about the newspapers, for, 
of course, no one can say just what proportion of men.of 
public influence have so expressed themselves; but the 
number who have so expressed themselves is overwhelming. 

In this Kingdom, where I can myself form some opinion 
more or less accurate, and where I can check or verify my 
opinion by various methods—I am afraid, as I have fre- 
quently already reported, that the generation now living 
will never wholly regain the respect for our Government 
that it had a year ago. I will give you three little indi- 
cations of this feeling; it would be easy to write down hun- 
dreds of them: 

(One) The governing class: Mr. X [a cabinet member] 
told Mrs. Page a few nights ago that for sentimental rea- 
sons only he would be gratified to see the United States in 
the war along with the Allies, but that merely sentimental 
reasons were not a sufficient reason for war—by no means; 
that he felt most grateful for the sympathetic attitude of 
the large mass of the American people, that he had no 
right to expect anything from our Government, whose 
neutral position was entirely proper. Then he added; 
“But what I can’t for the life of me understand is your 


A8 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Government’s failure to express its disapproval of the 
German utter disregard of its Lusitania notes. After 
eight months, it has done nothing but write more notes. 
My love for America, I must confess, is offended at this 
inaction and—puzzled. J can’t understand it. You 
will pardon me, I am sure.” 

(Two) ‘Middle Class” opinion: A common nickname 
for Americans in the financial and newspaper districts of 
London is “'Too-prouds.”’ 

(Three) The man in the street: At one of the moving 
picture shows in a large theatre a little while ago they filled 
in an interval by throwing on the screen the picture of the 
monarch, or head of state, and of the flag of each of the 
principal nations. When the American picture appeared, 
there was such hissing and groaning as caused the man- 
agers hastily to move that picture off the screen. 

Some time ago I wrote House of some such incidents 
and expressions as these; and he wrote me that they were 
only part and parcel of the continuous British criticism 
of their own Government—in other words, a part of the 
passing hysteria of war. This remark shows how House 
was living in an atmosphere of illusion. 

As the matter stands to-day our Government has sunk 
lower, as regards British and European opinion, than it 
has ever been in our time, not as a part of the hysteria of 
war but as a result of this process of reasoning, whether it 
be right or wrong: 

We said that we should hold the Germans to strict ac- 
countability on account of the Lusitania. We have not 
settled that yet and we still allow the German Ambassa- 
dor to discuss it after the Hesperian and other such acts 
showed that his Arabic pledge was worthless. 

The Lusitania grows larger and larger in European 
memory and imagination. It looks as if it would become 


THE ‘LUSITANIA’ -——AND AFTER 49 


the great type of war atrocitics and barbarities. I have 
seen pictures of the drowned women and children used 
even on Christmas cards. And there is documentary 
proof in our hands that the warning, which was really an 
advance announcement, of that disaster was paid for by 
the German Ambassador and charged to his Government. 
It is the Lusitania that has caused European opinion to 
regard our foreign policy as weak. It is not the wish for 
us to go to war. No such general wish exists. 

I do not know, Mr. President, who else, if anybody, 
puts these facts before you with this complete frankness. 
But I can do no less and do my duty. 

No Englishman—except two who were quite intimate 
friends—has spoken to me about our Government for 
months, but I detect all the time a tone of pity and grief 
in their studied courtesy and in their avoidance of the 
subject. And they talk with every other American in 
this Kingdom. It is often made unpleasant for Amer- 
icans in the clubs and in the pursuit of their regular bus- 
iness and occupations; and it is always our inaction about 
the Lusitania. Our controversy with the British Govern- 
ment causes little feeling and that is a sort of echo of the 
Lusitania. They feel that we have not lived up to our 
promises and professions. 

That is the whole story. 

Believe me always heartily, 
WatrerR H. Pace. 


This dismissal of Dumba and of the Attachés has had 
little more effect on opinion here than the dismissal of 
the Turkish Ambassador.’ Sending these was regarded as 





1Rustem Bey, the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, was sent home 
early in the war, for publishing indiscreet newspaper and magazine articles. 


30 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


merely kicking the dogs of the man who had stolen our 
sheep. 


Vi 


One of the reasons why Page felt so intensely about 
American policy at this time was his conviction that the 
severance of diplomatic relations, in the latter part of 1915, 
or the early part of 1916, in itself would have brought the 
European War to an end. This was a conviction from 
which he never departed. Count Bernstorff was indus- 
triously creating the impression in the United States that 
his dismissal would immediately cause war between Ger- 
many and the United States, and there is little doubt 
that the Administration accepted this point of view. But 
Page believed that this was nothing but Prussian bluff. 
The severance of diplomatic relations at that time, in 
Page’s opinion, would have convinced the Germans of the 
hopelessness of their cause. In spite of the British 
blockade, Germany was drawing enormous quantities of 
food supplies from the United States, and without these 
supplies she could not maintain indefinitely her resist- 
ance. The severance of diplomatic relations would 
naturally have been accompanied by an embargo sus- 
pending trade between the United States and the Father- 
land. Moreover, the consideration that was mainly 
leading Germany to hope for success was the belief that 
she could embroil the United States and Great Britain 
over the blockade. A break with Germany would of 
course mean an end to that manceuvre. Page regarded 
all Mr. Wilson’s attempts to make peace in 1914 and early 
1915—hefore the Lusittanta—as mistakes, for reasons that 
have already been set forth. Now, however, he be- 
lieved that the President had a real opportunity to end 
the war and the unparalleled suffering which it was caus- 


THE ““LUSITANIA’ —-AND AFTER AI 


ing. The mere dismissal of Bernstorff, in the Ambassa- 
dor’s opinion, would accomplish this result. 

In a communication sent to the President on February 
15, 1916, he made this plain. 


To the President 


February 15, 7 p. mM. 

The Cabinet has directed the Censor to suppress, as far 
as he can with prudence, comment which is unfavourable 
to the United States. He has taken this action because 
the public feeling against the Administration is constantly 
increasing. Because the Lusifania controversy has been 
going on so long, and because the Germans are using it in 
their renewed U-boat campaign, the opinion of this coun- 
try has reached a point where only prompt action can 
bring a turn in the tide. Therefore my loyalty to you 
would not be complete if I should refrain from sending, 
in the most respectful terms, the solemn conviction which 
I hold about our opportunity and our duty. 

If you immediately refuse to have further parley or to 
yield one jot or tittle of your original Lusitania notes, and 
if you at once break diplomatic relations with the German 
Empire, and then declare the most vigorous embargo of 
the Central Powers, you will quickly end the war. There 
will be an immediate collapse in German credit. If there 
are any Allies who are wavering, such action will hold 
them in line. Certain European neutrals—Sweden, Ru- 
mania, Greece, and others—will put up a firm resistance 
to Germanic influences and certain of them will take part 
with Great Britain and France. There will be an end at 
once to the German propaganda, which is now world- 
wide. The moral weight of our country will be a deter- 
mining influence and bring an early peace. The credit 


a2 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


you will receive for such a decision will make you immortal 
and even the people of Germany will be forever grateful. 

It is my conviction that we would not be called upon 
to fire a gun or to lose one human life. 

Above all, such an action will settle the whole question 
of permanent peace. The absolute and grateful loyalty 
of the whole British Empire, of the British Fleet, and of 
all the Allied countries will be ours. The great English- 
speaking nations will be able to control the details of the 
peace and this without any formal alliance. ‘There will 
be an incalculable saving of human life and of treasure. 
Such an act will make it possible for Germany to give in 
honourably and with good grace because the whole world 
will be against her. Her bankrupt and blockaded people 
will bring such pressure to bear that the decision will be 
hastened. 

The sympathies of the American people will be brought 
in line with the Administration. 

If we settle the Lusitania question by compromising 
in any way your original demands, or if we permit it to 
drag on longer, America can have no part in bringing the 
war to anend. The current of allied opinion will run so 
strongly against the Administration that no censorship 
and no friendly interference by an allied government 
can stem the distrust of our Government which is now so 
strong in Europe. 

We shall gain by any further delay only a dangerous, 
thankless, and opulent isolation. The Lusitania is the 
turning point in our history. The time to act is now. 

Pace. 


CHAPTER XV 
THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 


EFERENCES in the foregoing letters show that 
Page was still having his troubles over the blockade. 
In the latter part of 1915, indeed, the negotiations with 
Sir Edward Grey on this subject had reached their second 
stage. The failure of Washington to force upon Great 
Britain an entirely new code of naval warfare—the Dec- 
laration of London—has already been described. ‘This 
failure had left both the British Foreign Office and the 
American State Department in an unsatisfactory frame 
of mind. The Foreign Office regarded Washington with 
suspicion, for the American attempt to compel Great 
Britain to adopt a code of naval warfare which was ex- 
ceedingly unfavourable to that country and exceedingly 
favourable to Germany, was susceptible of a sinister inter- 
pretation. The British rejection of these overtures, on 
the other hand, had evidently irritated the international 
lawyers at Washington. Mr. Lansing now abandoned 
his efforts to revolutionize maritime warfare and confined 
himself to specific protests and complaints. His communi- 
cations to the London Embassy dealt chiefly with partic- 
ular ships and cargoes. Yet his persistence in regarding 
all these problems from a strictly legalistic point of view 
Page regarded as indicating a restricted sense of states- 
manship. 
53 


54. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


To Edward M. House 


London, August 4, 1915. 
My DEAR House: 

The lawyer-way in which the Department 
goes on in its dealings with Great Britain is losing us the 
only great international friendship that we have any 
chance of keeping or that is worth having. Whatever 
real principle we have to uphold with Great Britain— 
that’s all right. I refer only to the continuous series of 
nagging incidents—always criticism, criticism, criticism 
of small points—points that we have to yield at last, and 
never anything constructive. I'll illustrate what I mean 
by a few incidents that I can recall from memory. If I 
looked up the record, I should find a very, very much 
larger list. 

(1) We insisted and insisted and insisted, not once but 
half a dozen times, at the very beginning of the war, on 
England’s adoption of the Declaration of London entire 
in spite of the fact that Parliament had distinctly declined 
to adopt it. Of course we had to give in—after we had 
produced a distinctly unfriendly atmosphere and much 
feeling. 

(2) We denied the British right to put copper on the 
contraband list—much to their annoyance. Of course 
we had at last to acquiesce. They were within their 
rights. 

(3) We protested against bringing ships into port to 
examine them. Of course we had to give in—after pro- 
ducing irritation. 

(4) We made a great fuss about stopped telegrams. 
We have no case at all; but, even after acknowledging 
that we have no case, every pouch continues to bring 
telegrams with the request that I ask an explanation why 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS | 99 


they were stopped. Such explanations are practically 
refused. I have 500 telegrams. Periodically I wire the 
state of the case and ask for more specific instructions. 
I never get an answer to these requests. But the De- 
partment continues to send the telegrams! We confess- 
edly have no case here; and this method can produce noth- 
ing but irritation. 

I could extend this list to 100 examples—of mere lawyer- 
like methods—mere useless technicalities and objections 
which it is obvious in the beginning cannot be maintained. 
A similar method is now going on about cotton. Now 
this is not the way Sir Edward Grey takes up business. 
It’s not the way I’ve done business all my life, nor that 
you have, nor other frank men who mean what they say 
and do not say things they do not mean. The constant 
continuation of this method is throwing away the real re- 
gard and confidence of the British Government and of the 
British public—very fast, too. 

I sometimes wish there were not a lawyer in the world. 
I heard the President say once that it took him twenty 
years to recover from his legal habit of mind. Well, his 
Administration is suffering from it to a degree that is 
pathetic and that will leave bad results for 100 years. 

I suspect that in spite of all the fuss we have made we 
shall at last come to acknowledge the British blockade; 
for it is pretty nearly parallel to the United States block- 
ade of the South during our Civil War. The only differ- 
ence is—they can’t make the blockade of the Baltic 
against the traffic from the Scandinavian neutral states 
effective. That’s a good technical objection; but, since 
practically all the traffic between those States and Ger- 
many is in our products, much of the real force of it is 
lost. 

If a protest is made against cotton being made contra- 


56 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


band—it’ll amount to nothing and give only irritation. 
It will only play into Hoke Smith-German hands and 
accomplish nothing here. We make as much fuss about 
points which we have silently to yield later as about a 
real principle. Hence they all say that the State Depart- 
ment is merely captious, and they pay less and less at- 
tention to it and care less and less for American opinion— 
if only they can continue to get munitions. We are re- 
ducing English regard to this purely mercenary basis. .. . 

We are—under lawyers’ quibbling—drifting apart very 
rapidly, to our complete isolation from the sympathy a 
the whole world. 


Yours forever sincerely, 
iW SEE: 


Page refers in this letter to the “blockade’”’; this was 
the term which the British Government itself used to de- 
scribe its restrictive measures against German commerce, 
and it rapidly passed into common speech. Yet the truth 
is that Great Britain never declared an actual blockade 
against Germany. A realization of this fact will clear up 
much that is obscure in the naval warfare of the next two 
years. At the beginning of the Civil War, President 
Lincoln laid an interdict on all the ports of the Confeder- 
acy; the ships of all nations were forbidden entering or 
leaving them: any ship which attempted to evade this 
restriction, and was captured doing so, was confiscated, 
with its cargo. That was a blockade, as the term has 
always been understood. A blockade, it is well to keep 
in mind, is a procedure which aims at completely closing 
the blockaded country from all commercial intercourse 
with the world. A blockading navy, if the blockade is 


‘Senator Hoke Smith, of Georgia, was at this time—and afterward—conduct- 
ing a bitter campaign against the British blockade and advocating an embargo 
as a retaliation. 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS ae 


successful, or “effective,” converts the whole country into 
a beleaguered fortress, just as an army, surrounding a 
single town, prevents goods and people from entering or 
leaving it. Precisely as it is the purpose of a besieging 
army to starve a particular city or territory into submis- 
sion, so it is the aim of a blockading fleet to enforce the 
same treatment on the nation asa whole. It is also essen- 
tial to keep in mind that the question of contraband has 
nothing to do with a blockade, for, under this drastic 
method of making warfare, everything is contraband. 
Contraband is a term applied to cargoes, such as rifles, 
machine guns, and the like, which are needed in the pros- 
ecution of war. 

That a belligerent nation has the right to intercept 
such munitions on the way to its enemy has been admitted 
for centuries. Differences of opinion have raged only as 
to the extent to which this right could be carried—the 
particular articles, that is, that constituted contraband, 
and the methods adopted in exercising it. But the im- 
portant point to be kept in mind is that where there is 
a blockade, there is no contraband list—for everything 
automatically becomes contraband. ‘The seizure of con- 
traband on the high seas is a war measure which is availed 
of only in cases in which the blockade has not been es- 
tablished. 

Great Britain, when she declared war on Germany, did 
not follow President Lincoln’s example and lay the whole 
of the German coast under interdict. Perhaps one reason 
for this inaction was a desire not unduly to offend neutrals, 
especially the United States; but the more impelling mo- 
tive was geographical. The fact is that a blockade of the 
German seacoast would accomplish little in the way of 
keeping materials out of Germany. A glance at the map 
of northwestern Europe will make this fact clear. In the 


58 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


first place the seacoast of Germany is a small affair. In 
the North Sea the German coast is a little indentation, 
not more than two hundred miles long, wedged in between 
the longer coastlines of Holland and Denmark; in the 
Baltic it is somewhat more extensive, but the entrances 
to this sea are so circuitous and treacherous that the sug- 
gestion of a blockade here is not a practicable one. The 
sreatest ports of Germany are located on this little North 
Sea coastline or on its rivers—Hamburg and Bremen. It 
might therefore be assumed that any nation which success- 
fully blockaded these North Sea ports would have strangled 
the commerce of Germany. That is far from being the 
case. The point is that the political boundaries of Ger- 
many are simply fictions, when economic considerations 
are involved. Holland, on the west, and Denmark, on 
the north, are as much a part of the German transporta- 
tion system as though these two countries were parts of 
the German Empire. ‘Their territories and the territories 
of Germany are contiguous; the railroad and the canal 
systems of Germany, Holland, and Denmark are prac- 
tically one. Such ports as Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and 
Copenhagen are just as useful to Germany for purposes of 
commerce as are Hamburg and Bremen, and, in fact, a 
special commercial arrangement with Rotterdam has 
made that city practically a port of Germany since 1868. 
These considerations show how ineffective would be a 
blockade of the German coast which did not also compre- 
hend the coast of Holland and Denmark. Germany 
could still conduct her commerce through these neigh- 
bouring countries. And at this point the great difficulty 
arose. A blockade is an act of war and can be applied 
only to a country upon which war has been declared. 
Great Britain had declared war on Germany and could 
therefore legally close her ports; she had not declared war 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 59 


on Holland and Denmark, and therefore could not use the 
same measure against those friendly countries. Conse- 
quently the blockade was useless to Great Britain; and so, 
in the first six months of the war, the Admiralty fell back 
upon the milder system of declaring certain articles con- 
traband of war and seizing ships that were suspected of 
carrying them to Germany. } 

A geographical accident had apparently largely de- 
stroyed the usefulness of the British fleet and had guar- 
anteed Germany an unending supply of those foodstuffs 
without which she could not maintain her resistance for 
any extended period. Was Great Britain called upon to 
accept this situation and to deny herself the use of the 
blockade in this, the greatest struggle in her history? 
Unless the British fleet could stop cargoes which were 
really destined to Germany but which were bound for 
neutral ports, Great Britain could not win the war; if the 
British fleet could intercept such cargoes, then the chances 
strongly favoured victory. The experts of the Foreign 
Office searched the history of blockades and found some- 
thing which resembled a precedent in the practices of the 
American Navy during the Civil War. In that conflict 
Nassau, in the Bahamas, and Matamoros, in Mexico, 
played a part not unlike that played by Rotterdam and 
Copenhagen in the recent struggle. These were both 
neutral ports and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the 
United States, just as Rotterdam and Copenhagen were 
outside the jurisdiction of Great Britain. They were the 
ports of powers with which the United States was at 
peace, and therefore they could not be blockaded, just as 
Amsterdam and Copenhagen were ports of powers with 
which Great Britain was now at peace. 

Trade from Great Britain to the Bahamas and Mexico 
was ostensibly trade from one neutral port to another 


60 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


neutral port in the same sense as was trade from the 
United States to Holland and Denmark. Yet the fact is 
that the ‘neutrality ”’ of this trade, in the Civil War, from 
Great Britain to the Bahamas and Mexico, was the most 
transparent subterfuge; such trade was not “neutral” in 
the slightest degree. It consisted almost entirely of 
contraband of war and was intended for the armies of the 
Confederate States, then in arms against the Federal 
Government. What is the reason, our Government 
asked, that these gentle and unwarlike inhabitants of the 
Bahamas have so suddenly developed such an enormous 
appetite for percussion caps, rifles, cannon, and other in- 
struments of warfare? ‘The answer, of course, lay upon 
the surface; the cargoes were intended for reshipment into 
the Southern States, and they were, in fact, immediately 
so reshipped. The American Government, which has 
always regarded realities as more important than logic, 
brushed aside the consideration that this trade was con- 
ducted through neutral ports, unhesitatingly seized these 
ships and condemned both the ships and their cargoes. 
Its action was without legal precedent, but our American 
courts devised a new principle of international law to 
cover the case—that of “‘continuous voyage ”’ or “ultimate 
destination.’ Under this new doctrine it was maintained 
that cargoes of contraband could be seized anywhere upon 
the high seas, even though they were going from one neu- 
tral port to another, if it could be demonstrated that this 
contraband was really on its way to the enemy. The 
mere fact that it was transshipped at an intermediate 
neutral port was not important; the important point was 
the “‘ultimate destination.” British shippers naturally 
raged over these decisions, but they met with little sym- 
pathy from their own government. Great Britain filed 
no protest against the doctrine of “continuous voyage,”’ 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 61 


but recognized its fundamental soundness, and since 1865 
this doctrine has been a part of international law. 

Great Britain’s good sense in acquiescing in our Civil 
War practices now met its reward; for these decisions of 
American courts proved a godsend in her hour of trial. 
The one neutral from which trouble was anticipated was 
the United States. What better way to meet this situa- 
tion than to base British maritime warfare upon the deci- 
sions of American courts? What more ideal solution of the 
problem than to make Chief Justice Chase, of the United 
States Supreme Court, really the author of the British 
“blockade” against Germany? The policy of the Brit- 
ish Foreign Office was to use the sea power of Great Brit- 
ain to crush the enemy, but to do it in a way that would 
not alienate American sympathy and American support; 
clearly the one way in which both these ends could be 
attained was to frame these war measures upon the pro- 
nouncements of American prize courts. In a broad sense 
this is precisely what Sir Edward Grey now proceeded to 
do. There was a difference, of course, which Great 
Britain’s enemies in the American Senate—such men as 
Senator Hoke Smith, of Georgia, and Senator Thomas 
Walsh, of Montana—proceeded to point out; but it was a 
difference of degree. Great Britain based her blockade 
measures upon the American principle of “‘ultimate des- 
tination,’ but it was necessary considerably to extend 
that doctrine in order to meet the necessities of the new 
situation. President Lincoln had applied this principle 
to absolute contraband, such as powder, shells, rifles, and 
other munitions of war. Great Britain now proceeded to 
apply it to that nebulous class of commodities known as 
“conditional contraband,’ the chief of which was food- 
stuffs. If the United States, while a war was pending, 
could evolve the idea of “ultimate destination” and apply 


62 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


it to absolute contraband, could not Great Britain, while 
another war was pending, carry it one degree further and 
make it include conditional contraband? Thus reasoned 
the British Foreign Office. To this Mr. Lansing replied 
that to stop foodstuffs on the way to Germany through a 
neutral port was simply to blockade a neutral port, and 
that this was something utterly without precedent. Seiz- 
ing contraband is not an act of war against the nation 
whose ships are seized; blockading a port is an act of war; 
what right therefore had Great Britain to adopt measures 
against Holland, Denmark, and Sweden which virtually 
amounted to a blockade? 

This is the reason why Great Britain, m the pronounce- 
ment of March 1, 1915, and the Order in Council of March 
11, 1915, did not describe these measures as a “‘blockade.”’ 
President Wilson described his attack on Mexico in 1914 
as ““measures short of war,’’ and now someone referred to 
the British restrictions on neutral commerce as ““measures 
short of blockade.”’ The British sought another escape 
from their predicament by justifying this proceeding, 
not on the general principles of warfare, but on the ground 
of reprisal. Germany declared her submarine warfare 
on merchant ships on February 4, 1915; Great Britain 
replied with her announcement of March Ist, in which 
she declared her intention of preventing “commodities of 
any kind from reaching or leaving Germany.” The Brit- 
ish advanced this procedure as a retaliation for the illegal 
warfare which Germany had declared on merchant ship- 
ping, both that of the enemy and of neutrals. “‘The 
British and French governments will therefore hold 
themselves free to detain and take into port ships carrying 
goods of presumed enemy destination, ownership, and 
origin.” ‘This sentence accurately describes the purposes 
of a blockade—to cut the enemy off from all commercial 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 63 


relations with the outside world; yet the procedure Great 
Britain now proposed to follow was not that of a blockade. 
When this interdict is classically laid, any ship that at- 
tempts to run the lines is penalized with confiscation, 
along with its cargo; but such a penalty was not to be 
exacted in the present instance. Great Britain now pro- 
posed to purchase cargoes of conditional contraband dis- 
covered on seized ships and return the ships themselves to 
their owners, and this soon became the established prac- 
tice. Not only did the Foreign Office purchase all cotton 
which was seized on its way to Germany, but it took meas- 
ures to maintain the price in the markets of the world. 
In the succeeding months Southern statesmen in both 
Houses of Congress railed against the British seizure of 
their great staple, yet the fact was that cotton was all this 
time steadily advancing in price. When Senator Hoke 
Smith made a long speech advocating an embargo on the 
shipment of munitions as a punishment to Great Britain 
for stopping American cotton on the way to Germany, 
the acute John Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, arose in the 
Senate and completely annihilated the Georgia politician 
by demonstrating how the Southern planters were growing 
rich out of the war. 

That the so-called “blockade”’ situation was a tortuous 
one must be apparent from this attempt to set forth the 
salient facts. The basic point was that there could be no 
blockade of Germany unless the neutral ports of contig- 
uous countries were also blockaded, and Great Britain 
believed that she had found a precedent for doing this in 
the operations of the American Navy in the Civil War. 
But it is obvious that the situation was one which would 
provide a great feast for the lawyers. That Page sym- 
pathized with this British determination to keep food- 
stuffs out of Germany, his correspondence shows. Day 


64. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


after day the “‘protests” from Washington rained upon 
his desk. The history of our foreign relations for 1915 
and 1916 is largely made up of an interminable corre- 
spondence dealing with seized cargoes, and the routine of 
the Embassy was an unending nightmare of *‘demands,”’ 
“complaints,” “precedents,” “cases,” “notes,” “deten- 
tions”’ of Chicago meats, of Southern cotton, and the like. 
The American Embassy in London contains hundreds of 
volumes of correspondence which took place during Page’s 
incumbency ; more material has accumulated for those five 
years than for the preceding century and a quarter of the 
Government’s existence. The greater part of this mass 
deals with intercepted cargoes. 

The following extract from a letter which Page wrote 
at this time gives a fair idea of the atmosphere that pre- 
vailed in London while this correspondence was engaging 
the Ambassador’s mind: = 


The truth is, in their present depressed mood, the 
United States is forgotten—everything’s forgotten but 
the one great matter in hand. For the moment at least, 
the English do not care what we do or what we think or 
whether we exist—except those critics of things-in-general 
who use us as a target since they must take a crack at 
somebody. And I simply cannot describe the curious 
effect that is produced on men here by the apparent utter 
lack of understanding in the United States of the phase 
the war has now entered and of the mood that this phase 
has brought. I pick up an American paper eight days old 
and read solemn evidence to show that the British Goy- 
ernment is interrupting our trade in order to advance 
its own at our expense, whereas the truth is that the 
British Government hasn’t given six seconds’ thought in 
six months to anybody’s trade—not even its own. 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 65 


When I am asked to inquire why Pfister and Schmidt’s 
telegram from New York to Schimmelpfenig and Johann 
in Holland was stopped (the reason is reasonably obvious), 
[ try to picture to myself the British Minister in Washing- 
ton making inquiry of our Government on the day after 
Bull Run, why the sailing boat loaded with persimmon 
blocks to make golf clubs is delayed in Hampton Roads. 

I think I have neither heard nor read anything from 
the United States in three months that didn’t seem so 
remote as to suggest the captain of the sailing ship from 
Hongkong who turned up at Southampton in February 
and had not even heard that there was a war. All day 
long I see and hear women who come to ask if I can make 
inquiry about their sons and husbands, “dead or missing,” 
with an interval given to a description of a man half of 
whose body was splashed against a brick wall last night on 
the Strand when a Zeppelin bomb tore up the street and 
made projectiles of the pavement; as I walk to and from 
the Embassy the Park is full of wounded and their nurses; 
every man I see tells me of a new death; every member of 
the Government talks about military events or of Balkan 
venality; the man behind the counter at the cigar store 
reads me part of a letter just come from his son, telling 
how he advanced over a pile of dead Germans and one of 
them grunted and turned under his feet—they (the Eng- 
lish alone) are spending $25,000,000 a day to keep this 
march going over dead Germans; then comes a tele- 
sram predicting blue ruin for American importers and a 
cheerless Christmas for American children if a cargo of 
German toys be not quickly released at Rotterdam, and 
I dimly recall the benevolent unction with which Amer- 
ican children last Christmas sent a shipload of toys to 
this side of the world—many of them for German children 
—to the tune of “God bless us all’—do you wonder we 


66 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


often have to pinch ourselves to find out if we are we; and 
what year of the Lord is it? What is the vital thing— 
the killing of fifty people last night by a Zeppelin within 
sight of St. Paul’s on one side and of Westminster Abbey 
on the other, or is it making representations to Sir Ed- 
ward Grey, who has hardly slept for a week because his 
despatches from Sofia, Athens, Belgrade, and Salonika 
come at all hours, each possibly reporting on which side 
anew government may throw its army—to decide perhaps 
the fate of the canal leading to Asia, the vast British 
Asiatic empire at stake—is it making representations to 
Sir Edward while his mind is thus occupied, that it is of 
the greatest importance to the United States Government 
that a particular German who is somewhere in this King- 
dom shall be permitted to go to the United States because 
he knows how to dye sealskins and our sealskins are 
yet undyed and the winter is coming? There will be no 
new sealskins here, for every man and woman must give 
half his income to keep the cigarman’s son marching over 
dead Germans, some of whom grunt and turn under his 
feet. Dumba is at Falmouth to-day and gets just two 
lines in the newspapers. Nothing and nobody gets three 
lines unless he or it in some way furthers the war. Every 
morning the Washington despatches say that Mr. Lan- 
sing is about to send a long note to England. England 
won t read it till there comes a lull in the fighting or in 
the breathless diplomatic struggle with the Balkans. 
London and the Government are now in much the same 
mood that Washington and Lincoln’s administration 
were in after Lee had crossed the Potomac on his way to 
Gettysburg. Northcliffe, the Lord of Yellow Journals, 
but an uncommonly brilliant fellow, has taken to his bed 
from sheer nervous worry. “‘The revelations that are 
imminent,’ says he, “will shake the world—the incom- 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 67 


petence of the Government, the losses along the Darda- 
nelles, the throwing away of British chances in the Bal- 
kans, perhaps the actual defeat of the Allies.” I regard 
Lord Northcliffe less as an entity than as a symptom. 
But he is always very friendly to us and he knows the 
United States better than any Englishman that I know 
except Bryce. He and Bryce are both much concerned 
about our Note’s coming just “at this most distressing 
time.” “If it come when we are calmer, no matter; but 
now it cannot receive attention and many will feel that 
_ the United States has hit on a most unhappy moment— 
almost a cruel moment—to remind us of our sins.” — 
That’s the substance of what they say. 

Overwork, or perhaps mainly the indescribable strain 
on the nerves and vitality of men, caused by this experi- 
ence, for which in fact men are not built, puts one of 
our staff after another in bed. None has been seriously 
sick: the malady takes some form of “grip.” On the 
whole we’ve been pretty lucky in spite of this almost 
regular temporary breakdown of one man after another. 
I’ve so far escaped. But I am grieved to hear that 
Whitlock is abed—‘‘no physical ailment whatever—just 
worn out,’ his doctor says. I have tried to induce him 
and his wife to come here and make me a visit; but one 
characteristic of this war-malady is the conviction of the 
victim that he is somehow necessary to hold the world 
together. About twice a week I get to the golf links and 
take the risk of the world’s falling apart and thus escape 
both illness and its illusions. 


**IT cannot begin to express my deep anxiety and even 
uneasiness about the relations of these two great gov- 
ernments and peoples,’ Page wrote about this time. 
“The friendship of the United States and Great Britain 


68 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


is all that now holds the world together. It is the greatest 
asset of civilization left. All the cargoes of copper and 
oil in the world are not worth as much to the world. Yet 
when a shipper’s cargo is held up he does not think of 
civilization and of the future of mankind and of free 
government; he thinks only of his cargo and of the in- 
dignity that he imagines has been done him; and what is 
the American Government for if not to protect his rights? 
Of course he’s right; but there must be somebody some- 
where who sees things in their right proportion. The 
man with an injury rushes to the Department of State— 
quite properly. He is in a mood to bring England to 
book. Now comes the critical stage in the journey of his 
complaint. The State Department hurries 1t on to me— 
very properly; every man’s right must be guarded and de- 
fended—a right to get his cargo to market, a right to get 
on a steamer at Queenstown, a right to have his censored 
telegram returned, any kind of a right, if he have a right. 
Then the Department, not wittingly, I know, but hu- 
manly, almost inevitably, in the great rush of overwork, 
sends his ‘demands’ to me, catching much of his tone and 
apparently insisting on the removal of his grievance as a 
right, without knowing all the facts in the case. The 
telegrams that come to me are full of ‘protests’ and 
‘demands ’—protest and demand this, protest and demand 
that. A man from Mars who should read my book of 
telegrams received during the last two months would find 
it difficult to explain how the two governments have kept 
at peace. It is this serious treatment of trifling griev- 
ances which makes us feel here that the exactions and dis- 
locations and necessary disturbances of this war are not 
understood at home. 

‘“T assure you (and there are plenty of facts to prove it) 
that this Government (both for unselfish and selfish rea- 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 69 


sons) puts a higher value on our friendship than on any 
similar thing in the world. They will go—they are 
going—the full length to keep it. But, in proportion to 
our tendency to nag them about little things will the value 
set on our friendship diminish and will their confidence in 
our sincerity decline.”’ i 


The note which Lord Bryce and Lord Northcliffe so 
dreaded reached the London Embassy in October, 1915. 
The State Department had spent nearly six months in 
preparing it; it was the American answer to the so-called 
blockade established by the Order in Council of the pre- 
ceding March. Evidently its contents fulfilled the worst 
forebodings: 


To Edward M. House 


London, November 12, 1915. 
DEAR House: 

I have a great respect for the British Navy. Admiral 
Jellicoe now has under his command 3,000 ships of all 
sorts—far and away the biggest fleet, I think, that was 
ever assembled. for the first time since the ocean was 
poured out, one navy practically commands all the seas: 
nothing sails except by its grace. It is this fleet of course 
that will win the war. The beginning of the end—how- 
ever far off yet the end may be—is already visible by rea- 
son of the economic pressure on Germany. But for this 
fleet, by the way, London would be in ruins, all its treas- 
ure looted; every French seacoast city and the Italian 
peninsula would be as Belgium and Poland are; and thou- 
sands of English women would be violated—just as dead 
French girls are found in many German trenches that have 
been taken in France. Hence I greatly respect the Brit- 
ish fleet. 


70 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


We have a good navy, too, for its size, and a naval per- 
sonnel as good as any afloat. I hear—with much joy— 
that we are going to make our navy bigger—as much 
bigger (God save the mark!) as Bryan will permit. 

Now, whatever the future bring, since any fighting 
enterprise that may ever be thrust on us will be just and 
justified, we must see to it that we win, as doubtless we 
shall and as hitherto we always have won. We must be 
dead sure of winning. Well, whatever fight may be 
thrust on us by anybody, anywhere, at any time, for any 
reason—if it only be generally understood beforehand that 
our fleet and the British fleet shoot the same language, 
there'll be no fight thrust upon us. The biggest bully in 
the world wouldn’t dare kick the sorriest dog we have. 

Here, therefore, is a Peace Programme for you—the 
only basis for a permanent peace in the world. There’s 
no further good in having venerable children build houses 
of sand at The Hague; there’s no further good in peace 
organizations or protective leagues to enforce peace. We 
had as well get down to facts. So far as ensuring peace is 
concerned the biggest fact in the world is the British fleet. 
The next biggest fact is the American fleet, because of it- 
self and still more because of the vast reserve power of the 
United States which it implies. If these two fleets per- 
fectly understand one another about the undesirability of 
wars of aggression, there'll be no more big wars as long 
as this understanding continues. Such an understanding 
calls for no treaty—it calls only for courtesy. 

And there is no other peace-basis worth talking about— 
by men who know how the world is governed. 

Since I have lived here I have spent my days and nights, 
my poor brain, and my small fortune all most freely and 
gladly to get some understanding of the men who rule 
this Kingdom, and of the women and the customs and 


ee 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 71 


the traditions that rule these men—to get their trick of 
thought, the play of their ideals, the working of their 
imagination, the springs of their instincts. It is impos- 
sible for any man to know just how well he himself does 
such a difficult task—how accurately he is coming to 
understand the sources and character of a people’s actions. 
Yet, at the worst, I do know something about the Brit- 
ish: I know enough to make very sure of the soundness 
of my conclusion that they are necessary to us and we to 
them. Else God would have permitted the world to be 
peopled in some other way. And when we see that the 
world will be saved by such an artificial combination as 
England and Russia and France and Japan and Serbia, it 
calls for no great wisdom to see the natural way whereby 
it must be saved in the future. 

For this reason every day that I have lived here it has 
been my conscious aim to do what I could to bring about a 
condition that shall make sure of this—that, whenever we 
may have need of the British fleet to protect our shores or 
to prevent an aggressive war anywhere, it shall be ours by 
a natural impulse and necessity—even without the asking. 

I have found out that the first step toward that end is 
courtesy; that the second step is courtesy, and the third 
step—such a fine and high courtesy (which includes 
courage) as the President showed in the Panama tolls 
controversy. We have—we and the British—common 
aims and character. Only a continuous and _ sincere 
courtesy—over periods of strain as well as of calm—is 
necessary for as complete an understanding as will be re- 
quired for the automatic guidance of the world in peaceful 
ways. 

Now, a difference is come between us—the sort of 
difference that handled as between friends would serve 
only to bind us together with a sturdier respect. We 


le THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


send a long lawyer’s Note, not discourteous but wholly 
uncourteous, which is far worse. I am writing now only 
of the manner of the Note, not of its matter. There is 
not a courteous word, nor a friendly phrase, nor a kindly 
turn in it, not an allusion even to an old acquaintance, to 
say nothing of an old friendship, not a word of thanks for 
courtesies or favours done us, not a hint of sympathy in 
the difficulties of the time. There is nothing in its tone 
to show that it came from an American to an Englishman: 
it might have been from a Hottentot to a Fiji-Islander. 

I am almost sure—I’ll say quite sure—that this un- 
courteous manner is far more important than its endless 
matter. It has greatly hurt our friends, the real men of 
the Kingdom. It has made the masses angry—which is 
of far less importance than the severe sorrow that our 
discourtesy of manner has brought to our friends—I fear 
to all considerate and thoughtful Englishmen. 

Let me illustrate: When the Panama tolls controversy 
arose, Taft ceased to speak the language of the natural 
man and lapsed into lawyer’s courthouse zigzagging mut- 
terings. Knox wrote a letter to the British Government 
that would have made an enemy of the most affectionate 
twin brother—all mere legal twists and turns, as agreeable 
as a pocketful of screws. Then various bovine “interna- 
tional lawyers”’ wrote books about it. I read them and 
became more and more confused the further I went: you 
always do. It took me some time to recover from this 
word-drunk debauch and to find my own natural intelli- 
gence again, the common sense that I was born with. 
Then I saw that the whole thing went wrong from the place 
where that Knox legal note came in. Congressmen in the 
backwoods quoted cryptic passages from it, thought they 
were saying something, and proceeded to make their 
audiences believe that somehow England had hit us with 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 73 


a club—or would have hit us but for Knox. That pure 
discourtesy kept us apart from English sympathy for 
something like two years. 

Then the President took it up. He threw the legal 
twaddle into the gutter. He put the whole question in 
a ten-minutes’ speech to Congress, full of clearness and 
fairness and high courtesy. It won even the rural Con- 
gressmen. It was read in every capital and the men who 
conduct every government looked up and said, “‘This is a 
real man, a brave man, a just man.” You will recall what 
Sir Edward Grey said to me: “The President has taught us 
all a lesson and set us all a high example in the noblest 
courtesy.’ 

This one act brought these two nations closer together 
than they had ever been since we became an independent 
nation. It was an act of courtesy. 

My dear House, suppose the ecru some morning 
were to leave at your door a thing of thirty-five heads and 
three appendices, and you discovered that it came from 
an old friend whom you had long known and greatly 
valued—this vast mass of legal stuff, without a word or a 
turn of courtesy in it—what would you do? He had a 
grievance, your old friend had. Friends often have. 
But instead of explaining it to you, he had gone and had 
his lawyers send this many-headed, much-appendiced 
ton of stuff. It wasn’t by that method that you found 
your way from Austin, Texas, to your present eminence 
and wisdom. Nor was that the way our friend found 
his way from a little law-office in Atlanta, where I first 
saw him, to the White House. 

More and more I am struck with this—that govern- 
ments are human. They are not remote abstractions, 
nor impersonal institutions. Men conduct them; and 
they do not cease to be men. A man is made up of six 


TA THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


parts of human nature and four parts of facts and other 
things—a little reason, some prejudice, much provincial- 
ism, and of the particular fur or skin that suits his habitat. 
When you wish to win a man to do what you want him to 
do, you take along a few well-established facts, some rea- 
soning and such-like, but you take along also three or 
four or five parts of human nature—kindliness, courtesy, 
and such things—sympathy and a human touch. 

If a man be six parts human and four parts of other 
things, a government, especially a democracy, is seven, or 
eight, or nine parts human nature. It’s the most human 
thing I know. The best way to manage governments 
and nations—so long as they are disposed to be friendly— 
is the way we manage one another. I have a confirm- 
ation of this in the following comment which came to me 
to-day. It was made by a friendly member of Parlia- 
ment. 

“The President himself dealt with Germany. Even 
im his severity he paid the Germans the compliment of a 
most courteous tone in his Note. But in dealing with 
us he seems to have called in the lawyers of German 
importers and Chicago pork-packers. I miss the high 
Presidential courtesy that we had come to expect from 
Mr. Wilson.” 

An American banker here has told me of the experience 
of an American financial salesman in the city the day 
after our Note was published. His business is to make 
calls on bankers and other financial men, to sell them se- 
curities. He is a man of good address who is popular 
with his clients. The first man he called on, on that day, 
said: “I don’t wish to be offensive to you. But I have 
only one way to show my feeling of indignation toward 
the United States, and that is, to have nothing more to do 
with Americans.” 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS $5) 


The next man said: “No, nothing to-day, I thank you. 
No—nor to-morrow either; nor the next day. Good 
morning.”’ 

After four or five such greetings, the fellow gave it up 
and is now doing nothing. 

I don’t attach much importance to such an incident as 
this, except as it gives a hint of the general feeling. These 
financial men probably haven’t even read our Note. 
Few people have. But they have all read the short and 
sharp newspaper summary which preceded it in the Eng- 
lish papers. But what such an incident does indicate is 
the prevalence of a state of public feeling which would 
prevent the Government from yielding any of our de- 
mands even if the Government so wished. It has now been 
nearly a week since the Note was published. I have seen 
most of the neutral ministers. Before the Note came they 
expressed great eagerness to see it: it would champion 
their cause. Since it came not one of them has mentioned 
it tome. The Secretary of one of them remarked, after 
being invited to express himself: “It is too—too—long!”’ 
And, although I have seen most of the Cabinet this week, 
not a man mentioned it to me. People seem studiously 
to avoid it, lest they give offense. 

I have, however, got one little satisfaction. An Ameri- 
can—a_ half-expatriated loafer who talks “art’’—you 
know the intellectually affected and degenerate type— 
screwed his courage up and told me that he felt ashamed 
of his country. I remarked that I felt sure the feeling was 
mutual. That, I confess, made me feel better. 

As nearly as I can make out, the highwater mark of 
English good-feeling toward us in all our history was after 
the President’s Panama tolls courtesy. The low-water 
mark, since the Civil War, I am sure, is now. The Cleve- 
land Venezuela message came at a time of no nervous 


%6 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


strain and did, I think, produce no long-lasting effect. 
A part of the present feeling is due to the English convic- 
tion that we have been taken in by the Germans in the 
submarine controversy, but a large part is due to the lack 
of courtesy in this last Note—the manner in which it was 
written even more than its matter. As regards its mat- 
ter, I have often been over what I conceive to be the main 
points with Sir Edward Grey—very frankly and without 
the least offense. He has said: ““We may have to arbi- 
trate these things,’ as he might say, “‘We had better take 
a cab because it is raining.”’ It is easily possible—or it 
was—to discuss anything with this Government without 
offense. I have, in fact, stood up before Sir Edward’s 
fire and accused him of stealing a large part of the earth’s 
surface, and we were just as good friends afterward as be- 
fore. But I never drew a lawyer’s indictment of him asa 
land-thief: that’s different. 

I suppose no two peoples or governments ever quite un- 
derstand one another. Perhaps they never will. That is 
too much to hope for. But when one government writes 
to another it ought to write (as men do) with some refer- 
ence to the personality of the other and to their previous 
relations, since governments are more human than men. 
Of course I don’t know who wrote the Note. Hence I 
can talk about it freely to you without implying criticism 
of anybody in particular. But the man who wrote it 
never saw the British Government and wouldn’t know it 
if he met it in the road. ‘To him it is a mere legal entity, 
a wicked, impersonal institution against which he has the 
task of drawing an indictment—not the task of trying to 
persuade it to confess the propriety of a certain course of 
conduct. In his view, it is a wicked enemy to start with 
—like the Louisiana lottery of a previous generation or 
the Standard Oil Company of our time. 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS | 77 


One would have thought, since we were six months in 
preparing it, that a draft of the Note would have been 
sent to the man on the ground whom our Government 
keeps in London to study the situation at first hand and 
to make the best judgment he can about the most effec- 
tive methods of approach on delicate and difficult matters. 
If that had been done, I should have suggested a courteous 
short Note saying that we are obliged to set forth such 
and such views about marine law and the rights of neu- 
trals, to His Majesty’s Government; and that the con- 
tention of the United States Government was herewith 
sent—etc., etc.—Then this identical Note (with certain 
court-house, strong, shirt-sleeve adjectives left out) 
could have come without arousing any feeling whatsoever. 
Of course I have no personal vanity in saying this to you. 
I am sure I outgrew that foible many years ago. But 
such a use of an ambassador—of any ambassador—is 
obviously one of the best and most natural uses he could 
be put to; and all governments but ours do put their am- 
bassadors to such a use: that’s what they have ’em for. 

Per contra: a telegram has just come in saying that a 
certain Lichtenstein in New York had a lot of goods 
stopped by the British Government, which (by an ar- 
rangement made with their attorney here) agreed to buy 
them at a certain price: will I go and find out why the 
Government hasn’t yet paid Lichtenstein and when he 
may expect his money? Is it an ambassadorial duty to 
collect a private bill for Lichtenstein, in a bargain with 
which our Government has had nothing to do? I have 
telegraphed the Department, quite calmly, that I don’t 
think itis. I venture to say no ambassador ever had such 
a request as that before from his Government. 

My dear House, I often wonder if my years of work 
here—the kind of high good work I’ve tried to do—have 


78 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


not been thrown away. I’ve tried to take and to busy 
myself with a long-range view of great subjects. The 
British Empire and the United States will be here long 
after we are dead, and their relations will continue to be 
one of the most important matters—perhaps the most 
important matter—in the world. Well, now think of 
Lichtenstein’s bill! 

To get back where I started—I fear, therefore, that, 
when I next meet the Admiral of the Grand Fleet (with 
whom I used to discuss everything quite freely before he 
sailed away to the war), he may forget to mention that 
we may have his 3,000 ships at our need. 

Since this present difference is in danger of losing the 
healing influence of a kindly touch—has become an un- 
courteous monster of 35 heads and 3 appendices—I see no 
early end of it. The British Foreign Office has a lot of 
lawyers in its great back offices. They and our lawyers 
will now butt and rebut as long as a goat of them is left 
alive on either side. The two governments—the two 
human, kindly groups—have retired: they don’t touch, on 
this matter, now. The lawyers will have the time of their 
lives, each smelling the blood of the other. 

If more notes must come—as the English papers report 
over and over again every morning and every afternoon— 
the President might do much by writing a brief, human 
document to accompany the Appendices. If it be done 
courteously, we can accuse them of stealing sheep and of 
dyeing the skins to conceal the theft—without provoking 
the slightest bad feeling; and, in the end, they’ll pay 
another Alabama award without complaint and frame 
the check and show it to future ambassadors as Sir Edward 
shows the Alabama check to me sometimes. 

And it'll be a lasting shame (and may bring other Great 
Wars) if lawyers are now permitted to tear the garments 


THE AMBASSADOR AND THE LAWYERS 79 


with which Peace ought to be clothed as soon as she can 
escape from her present rags and tatters. 
Yours always heartily, 
Wea: 


P. S. My dear House: Since I have—in weeks and 
months past—both telegraphed and written the De- 
partment (and I presume the President has seen what 
I’ve sent) about the feeling here, I’ve written this letter 
to you and not to the President nor Lansing. I will not 
run the risk of seeming to complain—nor even of seeming 
to seem to complain. But if you think it wise to send or 
show this letter to the President, I’m willing you should. 
This job was botched: there’s no doubt about that. We 
shall not recover for many a long, long year. The iden- 
tical indictment could have been drawn with admirable 
temper and the way laid down for arbitration and for 
keeping our interpretation of the law and _ precedents 
intact—all done in a way that would have given no offense. 

The feeling runs higher and higher every day—goes 
deeper and spreads wider. 

Now on top of it comes the Ancona.! The English 
press, practically unanimously, makes sneering remarks 
about our Government. After six months it has got no 
results from the Lusitania controversy, which Bernstorft 
is allowed to prolong in secret session while factories are 
blown up, ships supplied with bombs, and all manner of 
outrages go on (by Germans) in the United States. The 
English simply can’t understand why Bernstorff is allowed 
to stay. They predict that nothing will come of the 
Ancona case, nor of any other case. Nobody wants us 
to get into the war—nobody who counts—but they are 





!1Torpedoed off Sardinia on Noy. 7, 1915, by the Austrians. There was a large 
loss of life, including many Americans. 


80 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


losing respect for us because we seem to them to submit to 
anything. 

We've simply dropped out. No English person ever 
mentions our Government to me. But they talk to one 
another all the time about the political anaemia of the 
United States Government. They think that Bernstorff 
has the State Department afraid of him and that the 
Pacifists dominate opinion—the Pacifists-at-any-price. 
I no longer even have a chance to explain any of these 
things to anybody I know. 

It isn’t the old question we used to discuss of our having 
no friend in the world when the war ends. It’s gone far 
further than that. It is now whether the United States 
Government need be respected by anybody. 

WEE 


CHAPTER XVI 
DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 


To Edward M. House 


June 30, 1915. 
My pear House: 

There’s a distinct wave of depression here—perhaps 
I'd better say a period of setbacks has come. So far as 
we can find out only the Germans are doing anything in 
the war on land. The position in France is essentially 
the same as it was in November, only the Germans are 
much more strongly entrenched. Their great plenty of 
machine guns enables them to use fewer men and to kill 
more than the Allies. The Russians also lack ammuni- 
tion and are yielding more and more territory. The Allies 
—so you hear now—will do well if they get their little 
army away from the Dardanelles before the German- 
Turks eat ’em alive, and no Balkan state comes in to help 
the Allies. Italy makes progress—slowly, of course, 
over almost impassable mountains—etc., etc. Most of 
this doleful recital I think is true; and I find more and 
more men here who have lost hope of seeing an end of the 
war in less than two or three years, and more and more 
who fear that the Germans will never be forced out of 
Belgium. And the era of the giant aeroplane seems about 
to come—a machine that can carry several tons and 
several men and go great distances—two engines, two 
propellers, and the like. It isn’t at all impossible, I am 
told, that these machines may be the things that will at 
last end the war—possibly, but I doubt it. 

81 


82 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


At any rate, it is true that a great wave of discourage- 
ment is come. All these events and more seem to prove 
to my mind the rather dismal failure the Liberal Govern- 
ment made—a failure really to grasp the problem. It was 
a dead failure. Of course they are waking up now, when 
they are faced with a certain dread lest many soldiers 
prefer frankly to die rather than spend another winter in 
practically the same trenches. You hear rumours, too, of 
sreat impending military scandals—God knows whether 
there be any truth in them or not. 

In a word, while no Englishman gives up or will ever 
give up—that’s all rot—the job he has in hand is not going 
well. He’s got to spit on his hands and buckle up his belt 
two holes tighter yet. And I haven’t seen a man for a 
month who dares hope for an end of the fight within any 
time that he can foresee. | 

I had a talk to-day with the Russian Ambassador.! He 
wished to know how matters stood between the United 
States and Great Britain. I said to him: “I'll give you 
a task if you have leisure. Set to and help me hurry up 
your distinguished Ally in dealing with our shipping 
troubles.”’ 

The old man laughed—that seemed a huge joke to 
him; he threw up his hands and exclaimed—* My God! 
He is slow about his own business—has always been slow 
—can’t be anything else.” 

After more such banter, the nigger in his wood-pile 
poked his head out: “Is there any danger,’ he asked, 
“that munitions may be stopped?” 

The Germans have been preparing northern France for 
German occupation. No French are left there, of course, 
except women and children and old men. They must be 
fed or starved or deported. The Germans put them on 
~ 1 Count Beckendorff. © 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 83 


trains—a whole village at a time—and run them to the 
Swiss frontier. Of course the Swiss pass them on into 
France. The French have their own and—the Germans 
will have northern France without any French popu- 
lation, if this process goes on long enough. 

The mere bang! bang! frightful era of the war is passed. 
The Germans are settling down to permanent business 
with their great organizing machine. Of course they talk 
about the freedom of the seas and such mush-mush; of 
course they’d like to have Paris and rob it of enough 
money to pay what the war has cost them, and London, 
too. But what they really want for keeps is seacoast— 
Belgium and as much of the French coast as they can win. 
That’s really what they are out gunning for. Of course, 
somehow at some time they mean to get Holland, too, 
and Denmark, if they really need it. Then they’ll have 
a very respectable seacoast—the thing that they chiefly 
lack now. 

More and more people are getting their nerves knocked 
out. I went to a big hospital on Sunday, twenty-five 
miles out of London. They showed me an enormous, 
muscular Tommy sitting by himself in a chair under the 
trees. He had had a slight wound which quickly got 
well. But his speech was gone. That came back, too, 
later. But then he wouldn’t talk and he’d insist on 
going off by himself. He’s just knocked out—you can’t 
find out just how much gumption he has left. That’s 
what the war did for him: it stupefied him. Well, it’s 
stupefied lots of folks who have never seen a trench. 
That’s what’s happened. Of all the men who started in 
with the game, I verily believe that Lloyd George is hold- 
ing up best. He organized British finance. Now he’s 
organizing British industry. 

{t’s got hot in London—hotter than I’ve ever known 


84 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


it. It gets lonelier (more people going away) and sadder 
—more wounded coming back and more visible sorrow. 
We seem to be settling down to something that is more 
or less like Paris—so far less, but it may become more and 
more like it. And the confident note of an earlier period 
is accompanied by a dull undertone of much less cheerful- 
ness. The end is—in the lap of the gods. 
q Wie Ei 


To Arthur W. Page 


American Embassy, London, 
JalyiZomto bay 
Dear ARTHUR: 

Many men here are very active in their 
Hihourant about the future relations of the United States 
and Great Britain. Will the war bring or leave them 
closer together? If the German machine be completely 
smashed (and it may not be completely smashed) the 
Japanese danger will remain. I do not know how to 
estimate that danger accurately. But there is such a 
danger. And, if the German wild beast ever come to life 
again, there’s an eternal chance of trouble with it. For 
defensive purposes it may become of the very first im- 
portance that the whole English-speaking world should 
stand together—not in entangling alliance, but with a 
much clearer understanding than we have ever yet had. 
I'll indicate to you some of my cogitations on this sub- 
ject by trying to repeat what I told Philip Kerr’ a fort- 
night ago—one Sunday in the country. I can write this 
to you without seeming to parade my own opinions.— 
Kerr is one of “The Round Table,’ perhaps the best 
group of men here for the real study and free discussion 
of large political subjects. Their quarterly, The Round 





1Afterward private secretary to Premier Lloyd George. 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 85 


Table, is the best review, I dare say, in the world. Kerr is 
red hot for a close and perfect understanding between 
Great Britain and the United States. I told him that, 
since Great Britain had only about forty per cent. of 
the white English-speaking people and the United States 
had about sixty per cent., I hoped in his natural history 
that the tail didn’t wag the dog. I went on: 

“You now have the advantage of us in your agerega- 
tion of three centuries of accumulated wealth—the spoil 
of all the world—and in the talent that you have devel- 
oped for conserving it and adding to it and in the insti- 
tutions you have built up to perpetuate it—your merchant 
ships, your insurance, your world-wide banking, your 
mortgages on all new lands; but isn’t this the only ad- 
vantage you have? This advantage will pass. You are 
now shooting away millions and millions, and you will 
have a debt that is bound to burden industry. On our 
side, we have a more recently mixed race than yours; 
you've begun to inbreed. We have also (and therefore) 
more adaptability, a greater keenness of mind in our 
masses; we are Old-World men set free—free of classes 
and traditions and all that they connote. Your so- 
called democracy is far behind ours. Your aristocracy 
and your privileges necessarily bring a social and eco- 
nomic burden. Half your people look backward. 

“Your leadership rests on your wealth and on the 
power that you’ve built on your wealth.” 

When he asked me how we were to come closer to- 
gether—‘‘closer together, with your old-time distrust of 
us and with your remoteness?’’—I stopped him at “‘re- 
moteness.”” 

“That’s the reason,” I said. “Your idea of our ‘re- 
moteness.’ “Remoteness’ from what? From you? Are 
you not betraying the only real difficulty of a closer sym- 


86 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


pathy by assuming that you are the centre of the world? 
When you bring yourself to think of the British Empire 
as a part of the American Union—mind you, I am not 
saying that you would be formally admitted—but when 
you are yourselves in close enough sympathy with us to 
wish to be admitted, the chief difficulty of a real union 
of thought will be gone. You recall Lord Rosebery’s 
speech in which he pictured the capital of the British 
Empire being moved to Washington if the American 
Colonies had been retained under the Crown? Well, it 
was the Crown that was the trouble, and the capital of 
English-speaking folk has been so moved and you still 
remain ‘remote.’ Drop ‘remote’ from your vocabu- 
lary and your thought and we'll actually be closer to- 
gether.” 

It’s an enormous problem—just how to bring these 
countries closer together. Perhaps nothing can do it but 
some great common danger or some great common ad- 
venture. But this is one of the problems of your life- 
time. England can’t get itself clean loose from the con- 
tinent nor from continental medizevalism; and with that 
we can have nothing to do. Men like Kerr think that 
somehow a great push toward democracy here will be 
given by the war. I don’t quite see how. So far the 
aristocracy have made perhaps the best showing in de- 
fense of English liberty. They are paying the bills of 
the war; they have sent their sons; these sons have died 
like men; and their parents never whimper. It’s a fine 
breed for such great uses as these. There was a fine in- 
cident in the House of Lords the other day, which gave 
the lie to the talk that one used to hear here about “de- 
generacy.” Somebody made a perfectly innocent pro- 
posal to complete a list of peers and peers’ sons who had 
fallen in the war—a thing that will, of course, be done, 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 87 


just as a similar list will be compiled of the House of 
Commons, of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. But 
one peer after another objected vigorously lest such a 
list appear immodest. “We are but doing our duty. 
Let the matter rest there.” 

In a time like this the aristocracy proves its worth. In 
fact, all aristocracies grew chiefly out of wars, and perhaps 
they are better for wars than a real democracy. Here, 
you see, you run into one of those contradictions in life 
and history which make the world so hard to change. . . . 

You know there are some reasons why peace, whenever 
it may come, will bring problems as bad as the problems 
of the war itself. I can think of no worse task than the 
long conferences of the Allies with their conflicting in- 
terests and ambitions. Then must come their confer- 
ences with the enemy. Then there are sure to be other 
conferences to try to make peace secure. And, of course, 
many are going to be dissatisfied and disappointed, and 
perhaps out of these disappointments other wars may 
come. The world will not take up its knitting and sit 
quietly by the fire for many a year to come. . . 

Affectionately, 
Wisk: BP 


One happiness came to Mr. and Mrs. Page in the midst 
of all these war alarums. On August 4, 1915, their only 
daughter, Katharine, was married to Mr. Charles G. 
Loring, of Boston, Massachusetts. The occasion gave the 
King an opportunity of showing the high regard in which 
Page and his family were held. It had been planned 
that the wedding should: take place in Westminster Ab- 
bey, but the King very courteously offered Miss Page 
the Royal chapel in St. James’s Palace. This was a dis- 
tinguished compliment, as it was the first time that any 


88 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


marriage, in which both bride and bridegroom were 
foreigners, had ever been celebrated in this building, which 
for centuries has been the scene of royal weddings. The 
special place which his daughter had always held in the 
Ambassador’s affections is apparent in the many letters 
that now followed her to her new home in the United 
States. The unique use Page made of the initials of his 
daughter’s name was characteristic. 


To Mrs. Charles G. Loring 


London, September 1, 1915. 
My pear K. A. P-rain: 

Here’s a joke on your mother and Frank: We three 
(and Smith) went up to Broadway in the car, to stay 
there a little while and then to go on into Wales, etc. 
The hotel is an old curiosity shop; you sit on Eliza- 
bethan chairs by a Queen Anne table, on a drunken floor, 
and look at the pewter platters on the wall or do your best 
to look at them, for the ancient windows admit hardly any 
light. “Oh! lovely,” cries Frank; and then he and your 
mother make out in the half-darkness a perfectly won- 
derful copper mug on the mantelpiece; and you go out 
and come in the ramshackle door (stooping every time) 
after you've felt all about for the rusty old iron latch, and 
then you step down two steps (or fall), presently to step 
up two more. Well, for dinner we had six kinds of meat 
and two meat pies and potatoes and currants! My 
dinner was a potato. I’m old and infirm and I have 
many ailments, but I’m not so bad off as to be able to 
live on a potato a day. And since we were having a va- 
cation, I didn’t see the point. So I came home where I 
nave seven courses for dinner, all good; and Mrs. Leggett 
took my place in the car. That carnivorous company 





Col. Edward M. House. From a painting by P. A. Laszlo 





The Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister 
of Great Britain, 1908-1916 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 89 


went on. They’ve got to eat six kinds of meat and two 
meat pies and—currants! I haven’t. Your mother calls 
me up on the phone every morning—me, who am living 
here in luxury, seven courses at every dinner—and asks 
anxiously, “And how are you, dear?’’ I answer: “‘ Prime, 
and how are you?” We are all enjoying ourselves, you 
see, and I don’t have to eat six kinds of meat and two 
meat pies and—currants! They do; and may Heaven 
save ‘em and get ’em home safe! 

It’s lovely in London now—fine, shining days and 
showers at night and Ranelagh beautiful, and few people 
here; but I don’t deny its loneliness—somewhat. Yet 
sleep is good, and easy and long. I have neither an 
ocean voyage nor six kinds of meat and two meat pies 
and currants. I congratulate myself and write to you 
and mother. 

You'll land to-morrow or next day—good; I congratu- 
late you. Salute the good land for me and present my 
respectful compliments to vegetables that have taste and 
fruit that is not sour—to the sunshine, in fact, and to 
everything that ripens and sweetens in its glow. 

And you’re now (when this reaches you) fixing up 
your home—your own home, dear Kitty. Bless your 
dear life, you left a home here—wasn’'t it a good and nice 
one?—left it very lonely for the man who has loved you 
twenty-four years and been made happy by your pres- 
ence. But he’ll love you twenty-five more and on and 
on—always. So you haven’t lost that—nor can you. 
And it’s very fit and right that you should build your own 
nest; that adds another happy home, you see. And I’m 
very sure it will be very happy always. Whatever I can 
do to make it so, now or ever, you have only to say. But 
—your mother took your photograph with her and got 
it out of the bag and put it on the bureau as soon as she 


90) THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


went to her room—a photograph taken when you were a 
little girl. 

Hodson' came up to see me to-day and with tears of 
gratitude in his voice told me of the present that you and 
Chud had made him. He is very genuinely pleased. As 
for the rest, life goes on as usual. 

I laugh as I think of all your new aunts and cousins 
looking you over and wondering if you'll fit, and then 
saying to one another as they go to bed: “She is lovely— 
isn’t she?” I could tell ’em a thing or two if I had a 
whack at ’em. 

And you'll soon have all your pretty things in place in 
your pretty home, and a lot more that I haven’t seen. 
I'll see ’em all before many years—and you, too! Tell 
me, did Chud get you a dinner book? Keep your record 
of things: you'll enjoy it in later years. And you'll have 
a nice time this autumn—your new kinsfolk, your new 
friends and old and Boston and Cambridge. If you run 
across Mr. Mifflin, William Roscoe Thayer, James Ford 
Rhodes, President Eliot—these are my particular old 
friends whose names occur at the moment. 

My love to you and Chud too, 

Affectionately, 
Wy Eats 


The task of being “German Ambassador to Great 
Britain” was evidently not without its irritations. 


To Arthur W. Page 


September 15, 1915. 
Dear ARTHUR: 


Yesterday was my German day. When the boy came 
up to my room, I told him I had some official calls to make. 


‘A messenger in the American Embassy. 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 91 


“Therefore get out my oldest and worst suit.” He 
looked much confused; and when I got up both my worst 
and best suits were laid out. Evidently he thought he 
must have misunderstood me. I asked your mother if she 
was ready to go down to breakfast. ‘“ Yes.”—‘‘ Well, 
then I'll leave you.” She grunted something and when 
we both got down she asked: “What did you say to me 
upstairs?’ I replied: “I regard the incident as closed.” 
She looked a sort of pitying look at me and a minute or 
two later asked: “What on earth is the matter with you? 
Can’t you hear at all?” Ireplied: ““No. Therefore let’s 
talk.” She gave it up, but looked at me again to make 
sure I was all there. 

I stopped at the barber shop, badly needing a shave. 
The barber got his brush and razor ready. I said: “Cut 
my hair.” He didn’t talk for a few minutes, evidently 
engaged in deep thought. 

When I got to my office, a case was brought to me of a 
runaway American who was caught trying to send news 
to Germany. “Very good,” said I, “now let it be made 
evident that it shall appear therefore that his innocence 
having been duly established he shall be shot.” 

What, sir?” 

“That since it must be evident that his guilt is genuine 
therefore see that he be acquitted and then shot.” 

Laughlin and Bell and Stabler were seen in an earnest 
conference in the next room for nearly half an hour. 

Shoecraft brought me a letter. “This is the most 
courteous complaint about the French passport bureau 
we have yet had. I thought you’d like to see this lady’s 
letter. She says she knows you.” 

“Do not answer it, then.” 

He went off and conferred with the others. 

Hodson spoke of the dog he sold to Frank. “Yes,” 


92 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


said I, ‘‘since he was a very nice dog, therefore he was 
worthless.”’ 

“Sird”’ 

And he went off after looking back at me in a queer way. 

The day went on in that fashion. When I came out to 
go to lunch, the stairs down led upward and I found my- 
self, therefore, stepping out of the roof on to the sidewalk 
—the house upside down. Smith looked puzzled. “Home, 
sir)” 

‘No. Go the other way.” After he had driven two 
or three blocks, I told him to turn again and go the other 
way—home! 

Your mother said almost as soon as I got into the door 
— ‘What was the matter with you this morning?” 

“Oh, nothing. You forget that I am the German 
Ambassador.” 

Now this whole narrative is a lie. Nothing in it oc- 
curred. If it were otherwise it wouldn’t be German. 

Affectionately, 
Wer ELel: 


To Mrs. Charles G. Loring 


London, 6 Grosvenor Square. 


Sunday, September 19, 1915. 
My pear Kitty: 


You never had a finer autumnal day in the land of the 
free than this day has been in this old kingdom—tresh 
and fair; and so your mother said to herself and me: 
“Let’s go out to the Laughlins’ to lunch,” and we went. 
There never was a prettier drive. We found out among 
other things that you pleased Mrs. Laughlin very much 
by your letter. Her garden changes every week or so, 
and it never was lovelier than it is now.—Then we came 
back home and dined alone. Well, since we can’t have 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 93 


you and Chud and Frank, I don’t care if we do dine 
alone sometimes for some time to come. Your mother’s 
monstrous good company, and sometimes three is a 
crowd. And now is a good time to be alone. London 
never was so dull or deserted since I’ve known it, nor 
ever so depressed. The military (land) operations are 
not cheerful; the hospitals are all full; Isee more wounded 
soldiers by far than at any previous time; the Zeppelins 
came somewhere to this island every night for a week— 
one of them, on the night of the big raid, was visible from 
our square for fifteen or twenty minutes—in general it is 
a dull and depressing time. I have thought that since 
you were determined to run off with a young fellow, you 
chose a pretty good time to go away. I’m afraid there'll 
be no more of what we call “fun” in this town as long 
as we stay here. 

Worse yet: in spite of the Coalition Government and 
everybody’s wish to get on smoothly and to do nothing 
but to push the war, since Parliament convened there’s 
been a great row, which doesn’t get less. The labour 
men give trouble; people blame the politicians: Lloyd 
George is saving the country, say some; Lloyd George 
ought to be hanged, say others. Down with Northcliffe! 
They seem likely to burn him at the stake—except those 
who contend that he has saved the nation. Some main- 
tain that the cabinet is too big—twenty-two. More say 
that it has no leadership. If you favour conscription, 
you are a traitor: if you don’t favour it, you are pro- 
German. It’s the same sort of old quarrel they had be- 
fore the war, only it is about more subjects. In fact, 
nobody seems very clearly to know what it’s about. 
Meantime the Government is spending money at a rate 
that nobody ever dreamed of before. Three million 
pounds a day—some days five million. The Germang 


94 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


meantime are taking Russia; the Allies are not taking the 
Dardanelles; in France the old deadlock continues. Bes- 
ton at its worst must be far more cheerful than this. 
Affectionately and with my love to Chud, 
W. H. P. 


To the President 


London, September 26, 1915. 
Dear Mr. PRESIDENT: 


The suppression of facts about the military situation is 
more rigorous than ever since the military facts have be- 
come so discouraging. ‘The volume of pretty well authen- 
ticated news that I used to hear privately has become 
sensibly diminished. Rumours that reach me by the back 
door, in all sorts of indirect ways, are not fewer, but fewer 
of them are credible. There is great confusion, great fear, 
very great depression—far greater, I think, than England 
has felt, certainly since the Napoleonic scare and probably 
since the threat of the Armada. Nobody, I think, sup- 
poses that England herself will be conquered: confidence 
in the navy is supreme. But the fear of a practical defeat 
of the Allies on the continent is become general. Russia 
may have to pay a huge indemnity, going far to rermburse 
Germany for the cost of the war; Belgium may be per- 
manently held unless Germany receive an indemnity to 
evacuate, and her seaports may be held anyhow; the Ger- 
mans may reach Constantinople before the Allies, and 
Germany may thus hold, when the war ends, an open way 
to the East; and France may have to pay a large sum to 
regain her northern territory now held by the Germans. 
These are not the convictions of men here, but they have 
distinctly become the fears; and many men’s mind are 
beginning to adjust themselves to the possible end of the 
war, as a draw, with these results. Of course such an 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 95 


end would be a real German victory and—another war as 
soon as enough men grow up to fight it. | 

When the more cheerful part of public opinion, espe- 
cially when any member of the Government, affects to 
laugh at these fears, the people say: “Well, make known 
the facts that you base your hope on. Precisely how 
many men have volunteered? Is the voluntary system 
a success or has it reached its limit? Precisely what is the 
situation in the Dardanelles? Are the allied armies 
strong enough to make a big drive to break through the 
German line in France? Have they big guns and am- 
munition enough? What are the facts about the chance 
in the Dardanelles? What have we done with reference 
to the Balkan States?”’ Thus an angry and ominous politi- 
cal situation is arising. The censorship on war news appar- 
ently becomes severer, and the general fear spreads and 
deepens. The air, of course, becomes heavily charged 
with such rumours as these: that if the Government con- 
tinue its policy of secrecy, Lloyd George will resign, see- 
ing no hope of a real victory: that, if he do resign, his res- 
ignation will disrupt the Government—cause a sort of 
earthquake; that the Government will probably fall and 
Lloyd George will be asked to form another one, since he 
is, as the public sees it, the most active and efficient man 
in political life; that, if all the Balkan States fail the Allies, 
Sir Edward Grey will be reckoned a failure and must 
resign; and you even now hear talk of Mr. Balfour’s 
succeeding him. 

It is impossible to say what basis there is for these and 
other such rumours, but they show the general very serious 
depression and dissatisfaction. Of that there is no doubt. 
Nor is there any doubt about grave differences in the 
Cabinet about conscription nor of grave fear in the public 
mind about the action of labour unions in hindermg the 


96 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


utmost production of ammunition, nor of the increasing 
feeling that the Prime Minister doesn’t lead the nation. 
Except Lloyd George and the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer’ the Cabinet seems to suffer a sort of paralysis. 
Lord Kitchener’s speech in the House of Lords, explaining 
the military situation, reads like a series of month-old 
bulletins and was a great disappointment. Mr. Asquith’s 
corresponding speech in the House seemed to lack com- 
plete frankness. The nation feels that it is being kept 
in the dark, and all the military information that it gets 
is discouraging. Sir Edward Grey, as philosophic and 
enduring a man as [ know, seems much more depressed 
than I have ever known him to be; Bryce is very very far 
from cheerful; Plunkett,? whom also you know, is in the 
dumps—it’s hard to find a cheerful or a hopeful man. 

The secrecy of official life has become so great and suc- 
cessful that prophecy of political changes must be mere 
guess work. But, unless good news come from the Dar- 
danelles in particular, I have a feeling that Asquith may 
resign—be forced out by the gradual pressure of public 
opinion; that Lloyd George will become Prime Minister, 
and that (probably) Sir Edward Grey may resign. Yet 
I cannot take the prevailing military discouragement 
at its face value. The last half million men and the last 
million pounds will decide the contest, and the Allies will 
have these. This very depression strengthens the nation’s 
resolution to a degree that they for the moment forget. 
The blockade and the armies in the field will wear Ger- 
many down—not absolutely conquer her, but wear her 
down—probably in another year. 

In the meantime our prestige (if that be the right word), 
in British judgment, is gone. As they regard it, we have 

'The Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna. 

“Sir Horace Plunkett. 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 97 


permitted the Germans to kill our citizens, to carry on a 
worldwide underhand propaganda from our country (as 
well as in it), for which they have made no apology 
and no reparation but only vague assurances for the 
future now that their submarine fleet has been almost 
destroyed. They think that we are credulous to the 
point of simplicity to accept any assurances that Bern- 
storff may give—in a word, that the peace-at-any-price 
sentiment so dominates American opinion and the Amer- 
ican Government that we will submit to any indignity 
or insult—that we will learn the Germans’ real char- 
acter when it is too late to save our honour or dignity. 
There is no doubt of the definiteness or depth of this 
opinion. 

And I am afraid that this feeling will show itself in our 
future dealings with this government. Tho public opin- 
ion of the nation as well as the Government accepts their 
blockade as justified as well as necessary. They will not 
yield on that point, and they will regard our protests as 
reaily inspired by German influence—thus far at least: 
that the German propaganda has organized and en- 
couraged the commercial objection in the United States, 
and that this propaganda and the peace-at-any-price 
sentiment demand a stiff controversy with England to 
offset the stiff controversy with Germany; and, after all, 
they ask, what does a stiff controversy with the United 
States amount to? I had no idea that English opinion 
could so quickly become practically indifferent as to what 
the United States thinks or does. And as nearly as I can 
make it out, there is not a general wish that we should go 
to war. The prevalent feeling is not a selfish wish for 
military help. In fact they think that, by the making of 
munitions, by the taking of loans, and by the sale of food 
we can help them more than by military and naval action. 


98 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Their feeling is based on their disappointment at our sub- 
mitting to what they regard as German dallying with us 
and to German insults. They believe that, if we had sent 
Bernstorff home when his government made its unsatis- 
factory reply to our first Lusitania note, Germany would 
at once have “come down”; opportunist Balkan States 
would have come to the help of the Allies; Holland and 
perhaps the Scandinavian States would have got some con- 
sideration at Berlin for their losses by torpedoes; that 
more attention would have been paid by Turkey to our 
protest against the wholesale massacre of the Armenians; 
and that a better settlement with Japan about Pacific 
islands and Pacific influence would have been possible for 
the English at the end of the war. Since, they argue, 
nobody is now afraid of the United States, her moral in- 
fluence is impaired at every capital; and I now frequently 
hear the opinion that, if the war lasts another year and 
the Germans get less and less use of the United States as 
a base of general propaganda in all neutral countries, 
especially all American countries, they are likely them- 
selves to declare war on us as a mere defiance of the whole 
world and with the hope of stirring up internal trouble 
for our government by the activity of the Germans and 
the Irish in the United States, which may hinder muni- 
tions and food and loans to the Allies. 

I need not remark that the English judgment of the 
Germans is hardly judicial. But they reply to this that 
every nation has to learn the real, incredible character of 
the Prussian by its own unhappy experience. France had 
so to learn it, and England, Russia, and Belgium; and we 
(the United States), they say, fail to profit in time by the 
experience of these. After the Germans have used us to 
the utmost in peace, they will force us into war—or even 
flatly declare war on us when they think they can thus 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 99 


cause more embarrassment to the Allies, and when they 
conclude that the time is come to make sure that no great 
nation shall emerge from the war with a clear commercial 
advantage over the others; and in the meantime they will 
prove to the world by playing with us that a democracy 
is necessarily pacific and hence (in their view) contempt- 
ible. I felt warranted the other day to remark to Lord 
Bryce on the unfairness of much of the English judgment 
of us (he is very sad and a good deal depressed). ** Yes,”’ 
he said, “I have despaired of one people’s ever really 
understanding another even when the two are as closely 
related and as friendly as the Americans and the Eng- 
lish.”’ 

You were kind enough to inquire about my health in 
your last note. If I could live up to the popular concep- 
tion here of my labours and responsibilities and delicate 
duties (which is most flattering and greatly exaggerated), 
I should be only a walking shadow of aman. But I am 
most inappreciately well. I imagine that in some year 
to come, I may enjoy a vacation, but I could not enjoy 
it now. Besides since civilization has gone backward 
several centuries, I suppose I’ve gone back with it to a 
time when men knew no such thing as a vacation. (Let’s 
forgive House for his kindly, mistaken solicitude.) The 
truth is, I often feel that I do not know myself—body or 
soul, boots or breeches. This experience is making us 
all here different from the men we were—but in just 
what respects it is hard to tell. We are not within hearing 
of the guns (except the guns that shoot at Zeppelins when 
they come); but the war crowds itself in on us sensibly 
more and more. There are more wounded soldiers on the 
streets and in the parks. More and more families one 
knows lose their sons, more and more women their hus- 
bands. Death is so common that it seems a little thing. 


100 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Four persons have come to my house to-day (Sunday) in 
the hope that I may find their missing kinsmen, and two 
more have appealed to me on the telephone and two 
more still have sent me notes. Since I began this let- 
ter, Mrs. Page insisted on my. going out on the edge of 
the city to see an old friend of many years who has 
just lost both his sons and whose prospective son-in- 
law is at home wounded. The first thing he said was: 
“Tell me, what is America going to do)”’ As we drove 
back, we made a call on a household whose nephew is 
‘““missing.”’—‘Can’t you possibly help us hear definitely 
about him?” 

This sort of thing all day every day must have some 
effect on any man. Then—yesterday morning gave 
promise of a calm, clear day. I never know what sen- 
sational experience awaits me around the next corner. 
Then there was put on my desk the first page of a rep- 
utable weekly paper which was filled with an open letter 
to me written by the editor and signed. After the usual 
description of my multitudinous and delicate duties, I 
was called on to insist that my government should protest 
against Zeppelin raids on London because a bomb might 
kill me! Humour doesn’t bubble much now on this side 
the world, for the censor had forbidden the publication of 
this open letter lest it should possibly cause American- 
German trouble! Then the American correspondents 
came in to verify a report that a news agency is said to 
have had that I was deluged with threatening letters!— 
More widows, more mothers looking for lost sons! 

Once in a while—far less often than if I lived in a sane 
and normal world—I get a few hours off and go to a lonely 
golf club. Alas! there is seldom anybody there but now 
and then a pair of girls and now and then a pair of old 
fellows who have played golf for a century. Yet back in 


DARK DAYS FOR THE ALLIES 101 


London in the War Office I hear they indulge in dis- 
respectful hilarity at the poor game I play. Now how do 
they know? (You’d better look to your score with 
Grayson: the English have spies in America. A major- 
general in their spy-service department told Mrs. Page 
that they knew all about Archibald! before he got on the 
ship in New York.) 

All this I send you not because it is of the slightest per- 
manent importance (except the English judgment of us) 
but because it will prove, if you need proof, that the world 
is gone mad. Everything depends on fighting power and 
on nothing else. A victory will save the Government. 
Even distinctly hopeful military news will. And English 
depression will vanish with a turn of the military tide. 
If it had been Bernstorff instead of Dumba—that would 
have affected even the English judgment of us. Tyrrell? 
remarked to me—did I write you? “Think of the freaks 
of sheer, blind Luck; a man of considerable ability like 
Dumba caught for taking a risk that an idiot would have 
avoided, and a fool like Bernstorff escaping!”” Then he 
added: “I hope Bernstorff will be left. No other human 
being could serve the English as well as he is serving 
them.” So, you see, even in his depression the English- 
man has some humour left—e. g., when that old sea dog 
Lord Fisher heard that Mr. Balfour was to become First 
Lord of the Admiralty, he cried out: “Damn it! he 
won't do: Arthur Balfour is too much of a gentleman.”’ 
So John Bull is now, after all, rather pathetic—de- 
pressed as he has not been depressed for at least a hundred 
years. The nobility and the common man are doing their 
whole duty, dying on the Bosphorus or in France without 





1It was Archibald’s intercepted baggage that furnished the documents which 
caused Dumba’s dismissal. 


*Sir William Tyrrell, private secretary to Sir Edward Grey. 


102 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


mee 


a murmur, or facing an insurrection in India; but the 
labour union man and the commercial class are holding 
back and hindering a victory. And there is no great 
national leader. 


‘Sincerely yours, 
WALTER H. Paar. 


CECA Ba By Daa Leh 
CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 


To EKdward M. House 


London, December 7, 1915. 
My pEAR House: 


I hear you are stroking down the Tammany tiger—an 
easier job than I have with the British lion. You can 
find out exactly who your tiger is, you know the house he 
lives in, the liquor he drinks, the company he goes with. 
The British lion isn’t so easy to find. At times in English 
history he has dwelt in Downing Street—not so now. So 
far as our struggle with him is concerned, he’s all over the 
Kingdom; for he is public opinion. ‘The governing crowd 
in usual times and on usual subjects can here overrun 
public opinion—can make it, turn it, down it, dodge it. 
But it isn’t so now—as it affects us. Every mother’s son 
of ’em has made up his mind that Germany must and 
shall be starved out, and even Sir Edward’s scalp isn’t 
safe when they suspect that he wishes to be lenient in 
that matter. They keep trying to drive him out, on 
two counts: (1) he lets goods out of Germany for the 
United States “and thereby handicaps the fleet’’; and 
(2) he failed in the Balkans. Sir Edward is too much of a 
gentleman for this business of rough-riding over all neutral 
rights and for bribing those Balkan bandits. 

I went to see him to-day about the Hocking, etc. He 
asked me: “Do you know that the ships of this line are 
really owned, in good faith, by Americans?” 

“T’ll answer your question,” said I, “if I may then ask 

103 


104. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


youone. No, I don’t know of my own knowledge. Now, 
do you know that they are not owned by Americans?” 

He had to confess that he, of his own knowledge, didn’t 
know. 

“Then,” I said, “for the relief of us both, I pray you 
hurry up your prize court.” 

When we’d got done quarrelling about ships and I 
started to go, he asked me how I liked Wordsworth’s war 
poems. “The best of all war poems,” said he, ‘because 
they don’t glorify war but have to do with its philos- 
ophy.” Then he told me that some friend of his had just 
got out a little volume of these war poems selected from 
Wordsworth; “‘and I’m going to send you a copy.” 

‘Just in time,” said I, “for I have a copy of ‘The Life 
and Letters of John Hay” that I’m ‘sending to you.” 

He’s coming to dine with me in a night or two: he’ll do 
anything but discuss our Note with me. And he’s the 
only member of the Government who, I think, would like 
to meet our views; and he can’t. To use the language of 
Lowell about the campaign of Governor Kent—these 
British are hell-bent on starving the Germans out, and 
neutrals have mighty few rights till that job’s done. 

The worst of it is that the job won’t be done for a very 
long time. Ive been making a sort of systematic round 
of the Cabinet to see what these fellows think about things 
in general at this stage of the game. Bonar Law (the 
Colonies) tells me that the news from the Balkans is 
worse than the public or the newspapers know, and that 
still worse news will come. Germany will have it all her 
own way in that quarter. 

‘And take Egypt and the canal?”’ 

“T didn’t say that,” he replied. But he showed that 
he fears even that. 
~ IBy William Roscoe Thayer, published in 1915. 





© Underwood & Underwood 
Herbert C. Hoover, in 1914 


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A facsimile page from the Ambassador’s letter of November 24, 
1916, resigning his Ambassadorship 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 105 


I could go on with a dozen of ’em; but I sat down to 
write you a Christmas letter, and nothing else. The 
best news I have for you is not news at all, but I conceive 
it to be one of the best hopes of the future. In spite of 
Irishmen past, present, and to come; in spite of Germans, 
whose fuss will soon be over; in spite of lawyers, who (if 
left alone) would bankrupt empires as their clients and 
think they’d won a victory; ’m going to leave things 
here in a year and a half so that, if wise men wish to lay 
a plan for keeping the peace of the world, all they need 
to do will be to say first to Uncle Sam: “This fellow or 
that must understand that he can’t break loose like a 
wild beast.’ If Uncle Sam agrees (and has a real navy 
himself), he’ll wink at John Bull, and John will follow 
after. You see our blackleg tail-twisters have the whole 
thing backward. They say we truckle to the British. 
My plan is to lead the British—not for us to go to them 
but to have them come to us. We have three white men 
to every two white men in their whole Empire; and, when 
peace comes, we'll be fairly started on the road to become 
as rich as the war will leave them. There are four clubs 
in London which have no other purpose than this; and the 
best review’ in the world exists chiefly for this purpose. 
All we need to do is to be courteous (we can do what we 
like if we do it courteously). Our manners, our politi- 
clans, and our newspapers are all that keep the English- 
speaking white man, under our lead, from ruling the 
world, without any treaty or entangling alliance whatso- 
ever. If, when you went to Berlin to talk to your gen- 
tle and timid friend, the Emperor, about disarmament 
before the war—if about 200 American dreadnaughts and 
cruisers, with real grog on ’em, had come over to make a 
friendly call, in the North Sea, on the 300 English dread- 
~ !The Ambassador had in mind The Round Table. 


106 ‘THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


naughts and cruisers—just a friendly call, admirals on 
admirals—the “‘Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Save 
the King’’—and if General Bell, from the Philippines, had 
happened in London just when Kitchener happened to 
be home from Egypt—then, there wouldn’t have been this 
war now. Nothing need have been said—no treaty, no 
alliance, nothing. For then 100 or more British naval 
ships would have joined the Panama naval procession 
and any possible enemy would have seen that combined 
fleet clean across the Pacific. 

Now this may all be a mere Christmas fancy—a mere 
yarn about what might have been—because we wouldn’t 
have sent ships here in our old mood; the crew would have 
missed one Sunday School. But it’s this kind of thing 
that does the trick. But this means the practice of 
courtesy, and we haven’t acquired the habit. Two years 
or more ago the training ships from Annapolis with the 
cadets aboard anchored down the Thames and stayed 
several weeks and let the boys loose in England. They 
go on such a voyage every two years to some country, 
you know. The English didn’t know that fact and they 
took the visit as a special compliment. Their old admirals 
were all greatly pleased, and i hear talk about that yet. 
We ought to have two or three of our rear-admirals 
here on their fleet now. Symington, of course, is a good 
fellow; but he’s a mere commander and attaché—not an 
admiral—in other words, not any particular compliment 
or courtesy to the British Navy. (As soon as the war 
began, a Japanese admiral turned up here and he is here 
now.) We sent over two army captains as military ob- 
servers. The Russians sent a brigadier-general. We 
ought to have sent General Wood. You see the differ- 
ence? There was no courtesy in our method. It would 
be the easiest and prettiest job in the world to swallow 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 107 


the whole British organization, lock, stock, and barrel— 
King, Primate, Cabinet, Lords, and Commons, feathers 
and all, and to make ’em follow our courteous lead any- 
where. The President had them in this mood when the 
war started and for a long time after—till the Lusitania 
seemed to be forgotten and till the lawyers began to write 
his Notes. He can get ’em back, after the war ends, by 
several acts of courtesy—if we could get into the habit of 
doing such things as sending generals and admirals as 
compliments to them. The British Empire is ruled by a 
wily use of courtesies and decorations. If I had the Pres- 
ident himself to do the correspondence, if I had three or 
four fine generals and admirals and a good bishop or 
two, a thoroughbred senator or two and now and then a 
Supreme Court Justice to come on proper errands and 
be engineered here in the right way—we could do or say 
anything we liked and they'd do whatever we’d say. I’d 
undertake to underwrite the whole English-speaking world 
to keep peace, under our leadership. Instead whereof, 
every move we now make is to follow them or to drive 
them. The latter is impossible, and the former is unbe- 
coming to us. 

But to return to Christmas.—I could go on writing for 
a week in this off-hand, slap-dash way, saying wise things 
flippantly. But Christmas—that’s the thing now. Christ- 
mas! What bloody irony it is on this side the world! 
Still there will be many pleasant and touching things 
done. An Englishman came in to see me the other day 
and asked if I’d send $1,000 to Gerard! to use in making 
the English prisoners in Germany as happy as possible 
on Christmas Day—only I must never tell anybody who 
did it. A lady came on the same errand—for the British 





1James W. Gerard, American Ambassador to Germany, and, as such, in charge 
of British interests in Germany. 


108 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


prisoners in Turkey, and with a less but still a generous 
sum. The heroism, the generosity, the endurance and 
self-restraint and courtesy of these people would melt a 
pyramid to tears. Of course there are yellow dogs among 
‘em, here and there; but the genuine, thoroughbred 
English man or woman is the real thing—one of the realest 
things in this world. So polite are they that not a single 
English person has yet mentioned our Note to me—not 
one. 

But every one I’ve met for two days has mentioned 
the sending of Von Papen and Boy-Ed! home—not that 
they expect us to get into the war, but because they re- 
gard this action as maintaining our self-respect. 

Nor do they neglect other things because of the war. 
I went to the annual dinner of the Scottish Corporation 
the other night—an organization which for 251 years has 
looked after Scotchmen stranded in London; and they 
collected $20,000 then and there. ‘There’s a good deal 
of Christmas in ’em yet. One fellow in a little patriotic 
speech said that the Government is spending twenty-five 
million dollars a day to whip the Germans.—‘‘Cheap 
work, very cheap work. We can spend twice that if 
necessary. Why, gentlemen, we haven’t exhausted our 
pocket-change yet.” 

Somehow I keep getting away from Christmas. It 
doesn’t stay put. It'll be a memorable one here for its 
sorrows and for its grim determination—an empty chair 
at every English table. But nowhere in the world will it 
be different except in the small neutral states here and in 
the lands on your side the world. 

How many Christmases the war may last, nobody’s 
wise enough to know. That depends absolutely on 





1The German military and naval attachés, whose persistent and outrageous vio- 
lation of American laws led to their dismissal by President Wilson. 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 109 


Germany. The Allies announced their terms ten months 
ago, and nothing has yet happened to make them change 
them. That would leave the Germans with Germany and 
a secure peace—no obliteration or any other wild non- 
sense, but only a secure peace. Let ’em go back home, 
pay for the damage they’ve done, and then stay there. 
I do hope that the actual fighting will be ended by Christ- 
mas of next year. Of course it may end with dramatic 
suddenness at any time, this being the only way, perhaps, 
for the Kaiser to save his throne. Or it may go on for 
two or three years. My guess is that it'll end next year— 
a guess subject to revision, of course, by events that can’t 
be foreseen. 

But as I said before—to come back to Christmas. Mrs. 
Page and I send you and Mrs. House our affectionate good 
wishes and the hope that you keep very well and very 
happy in your happy, prosperous hemisphere. We do, 
I thank you. We haven't been better for years—never 
before so busy, never, I think, so free from care. We get 
plenty to eat (such as it is in this tasteless wet zone), at a 
high cost, of course; we have comfortable beds and shoes 
(we spend all our time in these two things, you know); 
we have good company, enough to do (!!), no grievances 
nor ailments, no ill-will, no disappointments, a keen 
interest in some big things—all the chips are blue, you 
know; we don’t feel ready for halos, nor for other un- 
comfortable honours; we deserve less than we get and 
are content with what the gods send. This, I take it, is 
all that Martin' would call a comfortable mood for 
Christmas; and we are old enough and tough enough to 
dave thick armour against trouble. When Worry knocks 
at the door, the butler tells him we're not at home. 

And I see the most interesting work in the world cut 
“IE, S. Martin, Editor of Life. 


110 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


out for me for the next twenty-five or thirty years—to get 
such courtesy into our dealings with these our kinsmen 
here, public and private—as will cause them to follow us 
in all the developments of democracy and—in keeping 
the peace of the world secure. I can’t impress it on you 
strongly enough that the English-speaking folk have got 
to set the pace and keep this world in order. Nobody 
else is equal to the job. In all our dealings with the 
British, public and private, we allow it to be assumed 
that they lead: they don’t. We lead. They’ll follow, if 
we do really lead and are courteous to them. If we hold 
back, the Irishman rears up and says we are surrendering 
to the English! Suppose we go ahead and the English 
surrender to us, what can your Irishmen do then? Or 
your German? The British Navy is a pretty good sort 
of dog to have to trot under your wagon. If we are 
willing to have ten years of thoughtful good manners, I 
tell you Jellicoe will eat out of your hand. 

Therefore, cheer up! It’s not at all improbable that 
Ford! and his cargo of cranks, if they get across the ocean, 
may strike a German mine in the North Sea. Then 
they'll die happy, as martyrs; and the rest of us will live 
happy, and it'll be a Merry Christmas for everybody. 

Our love to Mrs. House. 

Always heartily yours, 
Wr Hoe: 


To Frank N. Doubleday and Others 
London, Christmas, 1915. 
Dear D. P. & Co. 
; Now, since we're talking about the war, let 
me deliver my opinion and leave the subject. They’re 





'Mr. Henry Ford at this time was getting together his famous peace ship, which 
was to sail to Europe “to get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas.”’ 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 ill 


killing one another all right; you needn't have any doubt 
about that—so many thousand every day, whether there’s 
any battle or not. When there’s “nothing to report’”’ 
from France, that means the regular 5,000 casualties that 
happen every day. ‘There isn’t any way of getting rid of 
men that has been forgotten or neglected. Women and 
children, too, of course, starve in Serbia and Poland and 
are massacred in Turkey. England, though she has by 
very much the largest army she ever had, has the smallest 
of all the big armies and yet I don’t know a family that 
had men of fighting age which hasn’t lost one or more 
members. And the worst is to come. But you never 
hear a complaint. Poor Mr. Dent,! for instance (two 
sons dead), says: “It’s all right. England must be 
saved.”’ 

And this Kingdom alone, as you know, is spending 
twenty-five million dollars a day. The big loan placed in 
the United States? would last but twenty days! If this 
pace of slaughter and of spending go on long enough, 
there won’t be any men or any money left on this side the 
world. Yet there will be both left, of course; for somehow 
things never quite go to the ultimate smash that seems to 
come. Read the history of the French Revolution. How 
did the French nation survive? 

It will go on, unless some unexpected dramatic military 
event end it, for something like another year at least— 
many say for two years more, and some, three years 
more. It'll stop, of course, whenever Germany will pro- 
pose terms that the Allies can consider—or something 
near such terms; and it won't stop before. By blockade 
pressure and by fighting, the Allies are gradually wearing 
the Germans out. We can see here the gradual pressure 
~4J. M. Dent, the London publisher. 

2$500,000,000. 


112 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


of events in that direction. My guess is that they won't 
go into a third winter. 

Well, dear gentlemen, however you may feel about it, 
that’s enough for me. My day—every day—is divided 
into these parts: (1) two to three hours listening to Amer- 
icans or their agents here whose cargoes are stopped, to 
sorrowing American parents whose boys have run away 
and gone into the English Army, to nurses and doctors 
and shell makers who wish to go to France, to bereaved 
English men and women whose sons are “missing”: can 
I have them found in Germany? (2) to answering letters 
about these same cheerful subjects; (3) to going over cases 
and documents prepared about all these sorts of troubles 
and forty other sorts, by the eight or ten secretaries of 
the Embassy, and a conference with every one of them; 
(4) the reading of two books of telegrams, one incoming, 
the other outgoing, and the preparation of a lot of answers; 
(5) going to the Foreign Office, not every day but often, 
to discuss more troubles there; (6) home to dinner at 8 
o’clock—at home or somewhere else, and there is more 
talk about the war or about the political troubles. That 
for a regular daily routine for pretty nearly a year and a 
half! As I say, if anybody is keeping the war up for my 
entertainment, he now has my permission to stop. No 
time to read, no time to write, little time to think, little 
or no time to see the people you most wish to see, I often 
don’t know the day of the week or of the month: it’s a 
sort of life in the trenches, without the immediate physical 
danger. Then I have my cabinet meetings, my financial 
reports (money we spend for four governments: I had till 
recently about a million dollars subject to my check); 
then the commission for the relief of Belgium; then the 
Ambassadors and Ministers of the other neutral states— 
our task is worse than war! 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 113 


Well, praise God for sleep. I get from seven to nine 
hours a night, unbroken; and I don’t take Armageddon 
to bed with me. 

I don’t mind telling you (nobody else) that the more I 
see just how great statesmen work and manage great 
governments—the more I see of them at close range— 
whether in Washington or London or Berlin or Vienna or 
Constantinople (for these are my Capitals), the more I 
admire the methods of the Long Island farmers. Boys, I 
swear I could take our crowd and do a better job than 
many of these great men do. I have to spend a lot of 
time to correct their moves before the other fellow finds 
out the mistake. For instance I know I spent $2,000 in 
telegrams before I could make the German Government 
understand the British military age, and the British 
Government understand the German military age, for 
exchanging prisoners who had lost two legs or arms or 
both eyes; and I’ve had to send a man to Berlin to get a 
financial report from one man on one floor of a building 
there and to take it to another man on the floor above. 
Just yesterday I was reminded that I had made eighteen 
requests for the same information of the British Govern- 
ment, when the nineteenth request for it came from Wash- 
ington; and I have now telegraphed that same thing nine- 
teen times since the war began. Of course everybody’s 
worked to death. But something else ails a lot of ’em all 
the way from Constantinople to London. Leaving out 
common gutter lying (and there’s much of it) the sheer 
stupidity of governments is amazing. They are all so 
human, so mighty human! I wouldn’t be a government 
for any earthly consideration. I’d rather be a brindled 
dog and trot under the wagon. 

But it has been an inexpressibly interesting experience 
to find all this out for myself. There’s a sort of weary 


114 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


satisfaction in feeling that you’ve seen too much of them 
to be fooled by *°em any more. And, although most men 
now engaged in this game of government are mere common 
mortals with most of the common mortal weaknesses, now 
and then a really big man does stumble into the business. 
I have my doubts whether a really big man ever deliber- 
ately goes into it. And most of the men who the 
crowd for the moment thinks are big men don’t really 
turn out so. It’s a game like bull fighting. The bull 
is likely to kill you—pretty sure to do so if you keep 
at the business long enough; but in the meantime you have 
some exciting experiences and the applause of the audi- 
ence. When you get killed, they forget you—immedi- 
ately. There are two rather big men in this Government, 
and you wouldn’t guess in three rounds who they are. 
But in general the war hasn’t so far developed very big 
men in any country. Else we are yet too close to them to 
recognize their greatness. Joffre seems to have great 
stuff in him; and (I assure you) you needn’t ever laugh ata 
Frenchman again. They are a great people. As for the 
British, there was never sucharace. It’s odd—I hear that 
it happens just now to be the fashion in the United States 
to say that the British are not doing their share. There 
never was a greater slander. They absolutely hold the 
Seven Seas. They have caught about seventy subma- 
rines and some of them are now destroying German ships 
in the Baltic Sea. They’ve sent to France by several 
times the largest army that any people ever sent over the 
sea. They are financing most of their allies and they 
have turned this whole island into gun and shell factories. 
They made a great mistake at the Dardanelles and they 
are slower than death to change their set methods. But 
no family in the land, from charcoal burners to dukes, 
hesitates one moment to send its sons into the army. 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 DES 


When the news comes of their death, they never whimper. 
When you come right down to hard facts, the courage and 
the endurance of the British and the French excel any- 
thing ever before seen on this planet. All the old stories 
of bravery from Homer down are outdone every day by 
these people. I see these British at close range, full-dress 
and undress; and I’ve got to know a lot of ’em as well as 
we can ever come to know anybody after we get grown. 
There is simply no end to the silly sides of their character. 
But, when the real trial comes, they don’t flinch; and (ex- 
cept the thoroughbred American) there are no such men 
in the world. 

A seven-foot Kansas lawyer (Kansas all over him) came 
to see me yesterday. He came here a month ago on 
some legal business. He told me yesterday that he had 
always despised Englishmen. He’s seen a few with stud- 
horse clothes and white spats and monocles on who had 
gone through Kansas to shoot in the Rocky Mountains. 
He couldn’t understand ’em and he didn’t like ’em. 
“So infernally uppish,” said he. 

Well, what do you think of ’em now?” 

“The very best people in the world,” said he. I think 
he has a notion of enlisting! 

You're still publishing books, I hear. That’s a good 
occupation. Id like to be doing it myself. But I can’t 
even get time to read ‘em now. 

But, as you know, nobody’s writing anything but war 
books—from Kipling to Hall Caine. Poor Kipling!—his 
boy’s dead. I have no doubt of it. I’ve had all the Ger- 
man hospitals and prison camps searched for him in vain. 
These writing men and women, by the way, are as true 
blue and as thoroughbred as any other class. I can never 
forget Maurice Hewlett’s brave behaviour when he 
thought that his flying corps son had been killed by the 


116 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Germans or drowned at sea. He’sno prig, but areal man. 
And the women are as fine as the men. Saus 

To go back to books: Of course nobody can tell what 
effect the war will have on the writing of them, nor what 
sort of new writers may come up. You may be sure that 
everything is stirred to its profoundest depths and will 
be stirred still more. Some old stagers will be laid on 
the shelf; that’s certain. What sort of new ones will 
come? I asked H. G. Wells this question. He has 
promised to think it out and tell me. He has the power 
to guess some things very well. Ill put that question to 
Conrad when I next see him. 

Does anybody in the United States take the Prime 
Minister, Mr. Asquith, to be a great man? His wife isa 
brilliant woman; and she has kept a diary ever since he 
became Prime Minister; and he now has passed the long- 
est single term in English history. Mr. Dent thinks he’s 
the biggest man alive, and Dent has some mighty good 
instincts. 

Talk about troubles! Think of poor Northcliffe. He 
thinks he’s saved the nation from its miserable govern- 
ment, and the government now openly abuses him in 
the House of Commons. Northcliffe puts on his brass 
knuckles and turns the Times building upside down and 
sets all the Daily Mail machine guns going, and has to go 
to bed to rest his nerves, while the row spreads and 
deepens. The Government keeps hell in the prayer- 
book because without it they wouldn’t know what to do 
with Northcliffe; and Northcliffe is just as sure that he 
has saved England as he is sure the Duke of Wellington 
did. 

To come back to the war. (We always do.) Since 
I wrote the first part of this letter, I spent an evening with 
a member of the Cabinet and he told me so much bad 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 lve 


military news, which they prevent the papers from pub- 
lishing or even hearing, that to-night I almost share this 
man’s opinion that the war will last till 1918. That 
isn't impossible. If that happens the offer that I heard 
a noble old buck make to a group of ladies the other night 
may be accepted. This old codger is about seventy-five, 
ruddy and saucy yet. “My dear ladies,” said he, “if 
the war goes on and on we shall have no young men left. 
A double duty will fall on the old fellows. I shall be 
ready, when the need comes, to take four extra wives, and 
I daresay there are others of my generation who are as 
patriotic as I am.” 

All of which is only my long-winded, round-about dip- 
lomatic way of wishing you every one and every one of 
yours and all the folk in the office, their assigns, superiors, 
dependents, companions in labour—all, everyone and 
sundry, the happiest of Christmases; and when you take 
stock of your manifold blessings, don’t forget to be thank- 
ful for the Atlantic Ocean. That’s the best asset of 
safety that we have. 

Affectionately yours, 
Wee Le Le 


To Mrs. Charles G. Loring 


6 Grosvenor Square, 
London, December 7, 1915. 
Dear Kitty: 

This is my Christmas letter to you and Chud—a poor 
thing, but the best I have to give you. At least it carries 
my love, dear, and my wishes that every Christmas under 
your own roof will be happier than the preceding one. 
Since your starting point is on the high level of your first 
Christmas in your own home—that’s a good wish: isn’t it? | 


118 ‘THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Um beginning to think a good deal of your mother and 
me. Here we are left alone by every one of you—in a 
foreign land; and, contrary to all predictions that any of 
you would have made about us four or five years ago, 
we're faring pretty well, thank you, and not on the edge 
of dying of loneliness at all. I tell you, I think we’re 
pretty brave and hardy. 

We're even capable of becoming cocky and saucy to 
every one of you. Be careful, then. 

You see if you have a war to live with you don’t nec- 
essarily need children: you'll have strife enough without 
‘em. We'll console ourselves with such reflections as 
these. 

And the truth is—at least about me—that there isn’t 
time to think of what you haven’t got. Of course, ’'m 
working, as always, to soften the relations between these 
two governments. So far, in spite of the pretty deep 
latent feeling on both sides—far worse than it ought to be 
and far worse than I wish it were—I’m working all the 
time to keep things as smooth as possible. Happily, 
nobody can prove it, but I believe it, that there is 
now and there has been all along more danger of a 
serious misunderstanding than anybody has known. 
The Germans have, of course, worked in 1000 ways to 
cause misunderstanding between England and the United 
States. Then, of course, there has been constant danger 
in the English bull-headed insularity which sees nothing 
but the Englishman’s immediate need, and in the English 
slowness. Add to these causes the American ignorance 
of war and of European conditions. It has been a God’s 
mercy for us that we have so far had a man like Sir 
Edward Grey in his post. And in my post, while there 
might well have been a better man, this much at least has 
been Jucky—that I do have a consciousness of English 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 119 


history and of our common origin and some sense of the 
inevitable destiny of the great English-speaking race— 
so that, when we have come to sharp corners in the road, 
I have known that whatever happen we must travel in the 
right general direction—have known that no temporary 
difference must be allowed to assume a permanent qual- 
ity. I have thought several times that we had passed the 
worst possible place, and then a still worse one would ap- 
pear. It does look now as if we had faced most of the 
worst difficulties that can come, but I am not sure what 
Congress may do or provoke. If we outlast Congress, we 
shall be safe. Now to come through this enormous war 
even with no worse feeling than already exists between the 
two countries—that’ll be a big thing to have done. But 
it’s work like the work of the English fleet. Nobody can 
prove that Jellicoe has been a great admiral. Yet the fleet 
has done the whole job more successfully than if it had 
had sea-fights and lost a part of their ships. 

Our Note has left a great deal of bad feeling—sup- 
pressed, but existent. A part of it was inevitable and 
(I’d say) even necessary. But we put in a lot of things 
that seem to me to be merely disputatious, and we didn’t 
write it in the best form. It corresponds to what you 
once called suburban: do you remember? Not thorough- 
bred. But we'll get over even that, especially if the Ad- 
ministration and the courts continue to bring the Ger- 
mans to book who are insulting our dignity and destroying 
our property and killing Americans. If we can satis- 
factorily settle the Lusitania trouble, the whole outlook 
will be very good. 

Your mother and I are hearing much interesting po- 
litical talk. We dined last night with Mr. Bonar Law. 
Sir Edward Carson was there. ‘To-day we lunched with 
Lady P.—the other side, you see. There are funda~ 


120 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


mental differences continually arising. They thought a 
few weeks ago that they had the Prime Minister’s scalp. 
He proved too nimble for them. Now one person after an- 
other says to you: “ Kitchener doesn’t deserve the rever- 
ence the people give him.”’ More and more folks say he’s 
hard to work with—is domineering and selfish. Nobody 
seems really to know him; and there are some signs that 
there may be a row about him. 

We've heard nothing from Harold in quite a little 
while. We have, you know, three of our footmen in the 
war. Allen was wounded at Loos—a flesh, bullet-wound. 
He’s about well now and is soon going back. Leslie is 
in the trenches and a postal card came from him the other 
day. The third one, Philip, is a prisoner in Germany. 
Your mother sent him a lot of things, but we’ve never 
heard whether he received them or not. The general 
strain—military, political, financial—gets greater. The 
streets are darker than ever. The number of wounded 
increases rapidly. More houses are turned into hospitals. 
The Manchesters’, next door, is a hospital now. And 
everybody fears worse days are to come. But they have 
no nerves, these English. They grit their teeth, but they 
go on bravely, enduring everything. We run into ex- 
periences every day that melt you, and the heroic things 
we hear outnumber and outdo all the stories in all the 
books. 

I keep forgetting Xmas, Kitty, and this is my Xmas 
letter. You needn’t put it in your stocking, but you'd 
really better burn it up. It would be the ruination of 
the world if my frank comments got loose. It’s for you 
and Chud only. You may fill your stocking full of the 
best wishes you ever received—enough to fill the polar 
bear skin. And I send you both my love. 

W. Hu RP; 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 121 


To Ralph W., Arthur W., and Frank C. Page’ 


London, Christmas, 1915. 
Dear Boys: R. W. P., A. W. P., F. C. P. 

A Merry Christmas to you! Good cheer, good com- 
pany, good food, good fires, good golf. I suppose (though 
the Lord only knows) that I'll have to be here an- 
other Christmas; but another after that? Not on your 
life! 

I think I’m as cheerful and hopeful as I ever was, but 
this experience here and the war have caused my general 
confidence in the orderly progress of civilization some- 
what to readjust itself. I think that any man who looks 
over the world and who knows something of the history 
of human society—I mean any American who really be- 
heves in democracy and in human progress—is somewhat 
saddened to see the exceeding slowness of that progress. 
In the early days of our Republic hopeful Americans held 
the opinion that the other countries of the world would 
follow our example; that is to say, would educate the 
people, would give the masses a chance to become real 
men, would make their governments and institutions 
serve the people, would dispense with kings and gross 
privileges and become free. Well, they haven’t done it. 
France is nominally a republic, but the masses of its 
people are far, far backward. Switzerland ts a republic, 
but a very small one. Denmark is a very free state, in 
spite of its monarchical form of government. In South 
America they think they have republics, but they haven’t 
the slightest idea of the real education and freedom of the 
people. Practically, therefore, the United States and 
the self-governing British colonies are the only really 
free countries of much importance in the whole world— 


1The Ambassador’s sons. 


122 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


these and this Kingdom. Our example hasn’t been fol- 
lowed. In Europe, Germany and Russia in particular 
have monarchs who are in absolute command. Thus on 
both sides the world, so far as government and the danger 
of war are concerned, there hasn’t been very much real 
progress in five hundred years. 

This is a little disappointing. And it means, of course, 
that we are likely to have periodical earthquakes like this 
present one till some radical change come. Republics 
have their faults, no doubt. But they have at least this 
virtue: that no country where the people really have the 
control of their government is likely to start out de- 
liberately on any war of conquest—is not likely to run 
amuck—and will not regard its population as mere food 
for shell and powder. 

Nor do I believe that our example of our government 
has, relatively to our strength and wealth and population, 
as much influence in the world as we had one hundred 
years ago. Our people have no foreign consciousness and 
I know that our government knows almost nothing about 
European affairs; nor do our people know. As regards 
foreign affairs our government lacks proper machinery. 
Take this as an illustration: The President wrote vig- 
orous and proper notes about the Lusifania and took a 
firm stand with Germany. Germany has paid no atten- 
tion to the Lusitania outrage. Yet (as I understand it) 
the people will not run the risk of war—or the Adminis- 
tration thinks they will not—and hence the President 
can do nothing to make his threat good. Therefore we 
stand in a ridiculous situation; and nobody cares how 
many notes we write. I don’t know that the President 
could have done differently—unless, before he sent the 
Lusitania notes, he had called Congress together and 
submitted his notes to Congress. But, as the matter 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 123 


stands, the Germans are merely encouraged to blow up 
factories and practically to carry on war in the United 
States, because they know we can (or will) do nothing. 
Mere notes break nobody’s skin. 

We don’t seem to have any machinery to bring any 
influence to bear on foreign governments or on foreign 
opinion; and, this being so, it is little wonder that the rest 
of the world does not follow our republican example. 

And this sort of impotence in influence has curious 
effects at home. For example, the ship-purchase bill, as 
it was at the last session of Congress, was an economic 
crime. See what has happened: We have waked up to 
the fact that we must have a big navy. Well, a navy is 
of no far-fighting value unless we have auxiliary ships and 
alot of ’em. Admiral Jellicoe has 3,000 ships under his 
command; and he couldn’t keep his fleet on the job if 
he didn’t have them. Most of them are commandeered 
merchant, passenger, and fishing ships.» Now we haven't 
merchant, passenger, and fishing ships to commandeer. 
We've got to build and buy auxiliary ships to our navy. 
This, to my mind, makes the new ship-purchase bill, or 
something like it, necessary. Else our navy, when it 
comes to the scratch, will be of no fighting value, however 
big it be. It’s the price we’ve got to pay for not having 
built up a merchant marine. And we haven’t built up a 
merchant marine because we've had no foreign conscious- 
ness. While our Irishmen have been leading us to twist 
the Lion’s tail, we've been depending almost wholly on 
English ships—and, in late years, on German ships. You 
can’t cross the ocean yet in a decent American ship. You 
see, we've declared our independence; and, so far as 
individual development goes, we’ve worked it out. But 
the governmental machinery for maintaining it and for 
making it visible to the world—we’ve simply neglected to 


124 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


build it or to shape it. Hence the President’s notes hurt 
nobody and accomplish nothing; nor could our navy put 
up a real fight, for lack of colliers and supply ships. It’s 
the same way all around the horizon. And these are the 
reasons we haven't made our democracy impress the 
world more. 

A democracy is not a quick-trigger war-engine and 
can’t be made into one. When the quick-trigger engines 
get to work, they forget that a democracy does not con- 
sider fighting the first duty of man. You can bend your 
energies to peaceful pursuits or you can bend them to 
war. It’s hard to do both at the same time. The Ger- 
mans are the only people who have done both at the same 
time; and even they didn’t get their navy big enough for 
their needs. 

When the infernal thing’s over—that’ll be a glad day; 
and the European world won't really know what it has 
cost in men and money and loss of standards till it is 
over. 

Affectionately, 
We Bia 


To Walter H. Page, Jr. 


London, Christmas, 1915. 
SIR: 

For your first Christmas, I have the honour to send you 
my most affectionate greetings; and in wishing you all 
good health, I take the liberty humbly to indicate some of 
the favours of fortune that I am pleased to think I enjoy 
in common with you. 

First—I hear with pleasure that you are quite well con- 
tent with yourself—not because of a reasoned conviction 
of your own worth, which would be mere vanity and un- 
~ 1The Ambassador’s infant grandson, son of Arthur W. Page. 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 P25 


worthy of you, but by reason of a philosophical dispo- 
sition. It is too early for you to bother over problems of 
self-improvement—as for me it is too late; wherefore we 
are alike in the calm of our self-content. What others 
may think or say about us is a subject of the smallest 
concern to us. Therefore they generally speak well of 
us; for there is little satisfaction in speaking ill of men 
who care nothing for your opinion of them. Then, too, 
we are content to be where we happen to be—a fact that 
we did not order in the beginning and need not now 
concern ourselves about. Consider the eternal coming 
and going of folk. On every road many are travelling 
one way and an equal number are travelling the other way. 
It is obvious that, if they were all content to remain at 
the places whence they set forth, the distribution of the 
population would be the same. Why therefore move 
hither and yon at the cost of much time and labour and 
money, since nothing is accomplished thereby? We 
spare ourselves by being content to remain where we are. 
We thereby have the more time for reflection. Nor can 
we help observing with a smile that all persons who have 
good reasons to see us themselves make the necessary 
journey after they discover that we remain fixed. 

Again, people about us are continually doing this ser- 
vice and that for some other people—running errands, 
mending fences, bearing messages, building, and tearing 
down; and they all demand equal service in return. Thus 
a large part of mankind keeps itself in constant motion 
like bubbles of water racing around a pool at the foot of a 
water-fall—or like rabbits hurrying into their warrens 
and immediately hurrying out again. Whereas, while 
these antics amuse and sadden us, we for the most part 
remain where we are. Hence our wants are few; they 
are generally most courteously supplied without our ask- 


126 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


ing; or, if we happen to be momentarily forgotten, we 
can quickly secure anything in the neighbourhood by a 
little judicious squalling. Why, then, should we whirl 
as bubbles or scurry as rabbits? Our conquering self- 
possession gives a masterful charm to life that the victims 
of perpetual locomotion never seem to attain. 

You have discovered, and my experience confirms yours, 
that a perpetual self-consciousness brings most of the 
misery of the world. Men see others who are richer than 
they; or more famous, or more fortunate—so they think; 
and they become envious. You have not reached the 
period of such empty vanity, and I have long passed it. 
Let us, therefore, make our mutual vows not to be dis- 
turbed by the good luck or the good graces of others, 
but to continue, instead, to contemplate the contented 
cat on the rug and the unenvious sky that hangs over all 
alike. 

This mood will continue to keep our lives simple. Con- 
sider our diet. Could anything be simpler or better? 
Weare not even tempted by the poisonous victuals where- 
with mankind destroys itself. The very first sound law 
of life is to look to the belly; for it is what goes into a 
man that ruins him. By avoiding murderous food, we 
may hope to become centenarians. And why not? The 
golden streets will not be torn up and we need be in no 
indecent haste to travel even on them. The satisfac- 
tions of this life are just beginning for us; and we shall 
be wise to endure this world for as long a period as pos- 
sible. 

And sleep is good—long sleep and often; and your age 
and mine permit us to indulge in it without the sneers of 
the lark or the cock or the dawn. 

I pray you, sir, therefore, accept my homage as the 
philosopher that you are and my assurance of that high 


CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND, 1915 L27 


esteem indicated by my faithful imitation of your virtues. 
I am, ‘Caen 

With the most distinguished consideration, 

With the sincerest esteem, and 

With the most affectionate good wishes, 

rohit 
Your proud, 
Humble, 
Obedient 
GGRANDDADDY. 
To Master Walter Hines Page, 
On Christmas, 1915. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 


HE beginning of the new year saw no improye- 

ment in German-American relations. Germany 
and Austria continued to violate the pledge given by 
Bernstorff after the sinking of the Arabic—if that shifty 
statement could be regarded as a “pledge.”” On Novem- 
ber 7, 1915, the Austrians sank the Ancona, in the Medi- 
terranean, drowning American citizens under conditions 
of particular atrocity, and submarine attacks on mer- 
chant ships, without the “warning” or attempt to save 
passengers and crew which Bernstorff had promised, took 
place nearly every day. On April 18, 1916, the Sussex 
was torpedoed in the English Channel, without warning 
and with loss of American life. This caused what seemed 
to be a real crisis; President Wilson sent what was practi- 
cally an ultimatum to Germany, demanding that it “‘im- 
mediately declare and effect an abandonment of its pres- 
ent methods of warfare against passenger and freight 
carrying vessels,” declaring that, unless it did so, the 
United States would sever diplomatic relations with the 
German Empire. In reply, Germany apparently backed 
down and gave the promise the President had demanded. 
However, it coupled this concession with an expression 
of its expectation that the United States would compel 
Great Britain to observe international law in the block- 
ade. As this latter statement might be interpreted as a 
qualification of its surrender, the incident hardly ended 
satisfactorily. 

128 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 129 


To Arthur W. Page 


Bournemouth 


May 22, 1916. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 


I stick on the back of this sheet a letter that Sydney 
Brooks wrote from New York (May Ist) to the Daily Mail. 
He formulates a question that we have many times asked 
ourselves and that, in one way or other, comes into every- 
body’s mind here. Of course the common fellow in Jones- 
ville who has given most of his time and energy to earning 
a living for his wife and children has no foreign conscious- 
ness, whether his Jonesville be in the United States or in 
England or in France or in Zanzibar. The real question 
is, Do these fellows in Jonesville make up the United 
States? or has there been such a lack of prompt leadership 
as to make all the Jonesville people confused? It’s hard 
for me to judge at this distance just how far the President 
has led and just how far he has waited and been pushed 
along. Suppose he had stood on the front steps every 
morning before breakfast for a month after the Lusitania 
went down and had called to the people in the same tone 
that he used in his note to Germany—had sounded a bugle 
call—would we have felt as we now feel? What would 
the men in Jonesville have done then? Would they 
have got their old guns down from over the doors? Or 
do they so want peace and so think that they can have 
peace always that they’ve lost their spine? Have they 
really been Bryanized, Fordized, Janeaddamsized, Sun- 
dayschooled, and Chautauquaed into supine creatures 
to whom the United States and the ideals of the Fathers 
mean nothing? Who think a German is as good as an 
Englishman? Who have no particular aims or aspirations 
for our country and for democracy? When T. R. was in 


130 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


the White House he surely was an active fellow. He 
called us to exercise ourselves every morning. He bawled 
“Patriotism” loudly. We surely thought we were awake 
during those strenuous years. Were we really awake or 
did we only look upon him and his antics as a sort of good 
show? All that time Bryan was peace-a-footing and 
prince-of-peacing. Now did he really have the minds 
of the people or did T. R.? 

If we’ve really gone to sleep and if the United States 
stands for nothing but personal comfort and commercial- 
ism to our own people, what a job you and the patriotic 
men of your generation have cut out for you! 

My own conviction (which I don’t set great store by) 
is that our isolation and prosperity have not gone so far 
in softening us as it seems. They’ve gone a good way, 
no doubt; but I think that even the Jonesville people yet 
feel their Americanism. What they need is—leadership. 
Their Congressmen are poor, timid, pork-barrel creatures. 
Their governors are in training for the Senate. The Vice- 
President reads no official literature of the war, “‘ because 
then I might have a conviction about it and that wouldn’t 
be neutral.”’ And soon. If the people had a real lead- 
ership, I believe they’d wake up even in Jonesville. 

Well, let’s let these things go for the moment. How’s 
the Ambassador?! And the Ambassador’s mother and 
sister? They’re nice folks of whom and from whom I 
hear far too little. Give ’em my love. I don’t want you 
to rear a fighting family. But these kids won’t and 
mustn't grow up peace-cranks—not that anybody objects 
to peace, but I do despise and distrust a crank, a crank 
about anything. That’s the lesson we’ve got to learn 
from these troubled times. First, let cranks alone—the 
other side of the street is good enough for them. Then, 


1A playful reference to the Ambassador’s infant grandson, Walter TH. Page, Jr. 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 131 


if they persist, | see nothing to do but to kill ’em, and 
that’s troublesome and inconvenient. 

But, as I was saying, bless the babies. I can’t begin to 
tell you how very much I long to see them, to make their 
acquaintance, to chuckle ’em and punch ’em and see ’em 
laugh, and to see just what sort of kids they be. 

I’ve written you how in my opinion there’s no country 
in the world fit for a modern gentleman and man-of-char- 
acter to live in except (1) the United States and (2) this 
island. And this island is chiefly valuable for the breed 
of men—the right stock. They become more valuable to 
the world after they go away from home. But the right 
blood’s here. ‘This island’s breed is the best there is. An 
Englishman or a Scotchman is the best ancestor in this 
world, many as his shortcomings are. Some English- 
man asked me one night in what, I thought, the English- 
man appeared at his best. I said, ““As an ancestor to 
Americans!”’ And this is the fundamental reason why we 
(two peoples) belong close together. Reasons that flow 
from these are such as follows: (1) The race is the sea- 
mastering race and the navy-managing race and the ocean- 
carrying race; (2) the race is the literary race, (3) the 
exploring and settling and colonizing race, (4) the race to 
whom fair play appeals, and (5) that insists on individual 
development. 

Your mother having read these two days 1,734 pages of 
memoirs of the Coke family, one of whose members wrote 
the great law commentaries, another carried pro-Ameri- 
can votes in Parliament in our Revolutionary times, re- 
fused peerages, defied kings and—hbegad! here they are 
now, living in the same great house and saying and doing 
what they darn please—we know this generation of ’em!— 
well, your mother having read these two big volumes 
about the old ones and told me 175 good stories out of 


132 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


these books, bless her soul! she’s gone to sleep in a big chair 
on the other side of the table. Well she may, she walked 
for two hours this morning over hills and cliffs and through 
pine woods and along the beach. I guess I'd better wake 
her up and get her to go to bed—as the properer thing to 
do at this time o’night, viz. 11. My golf this afternoon 
was too bad to confess. But I must say that a 650 and 
a 730 yard hole argues the audacity of some fellow and the 
despair of many more. Nature made a lot of obstructions 
there and Man made more. It must be seven or eight 
miles around that course! It’s almost a three hour task 
to follow my slow ball around it. I suggested we play 
with howitzers instead of clubs. Good night! 
W. H. P. 


~ To Frank N. Doubleday and Others 


Royal Bath and East Cliff Hotel, 


Bournemouth, May 29, 1916. 
Dear D. P. & Co.: 


I always have it in mind to write you letters; but there’s 
no chance in my trenches in London; and, since I have 
not been out of London for nearly two years—since the 
war began—only an occasional half day and a night—till 
now—naturally I’ve concocted no letter. Ive been down 
here a week—a week of sunshine, praise God—and peo- 
ple are not after me every ten minutes, or Governments 
either; and my most admirable and efficient staff (now 
grown to one hundred people) permit few letters and 
telegrams toreach me. There never was a little rest more 
grateful. The quiet sea out my window shows no sign of 
crawling submarines; and, in general, it’s as quiet and 
peaceful here as in Garden City itself. 

I’m on the home-stretch now in all my thoughts and 
plans. Three of my four years are gone, and the fourth 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 133 


will quickly pass. That’s not only the limit of my leave, 
but it’s quite enough for me. I shouldn’t care to live 
through another such experience, if the chance should ever 
come tome. It has changed my whole life and my whole 
outlook on life; and, perhaps, you'd like to hear some in- 
pressions that it has made upon me. 

The first impression—perhaps the strongest—is a loss 
of permanent interest in Europe, especially all Europe 
outside of this Kingdom. I have never had the illusion 
that Europe had many things that we needed to learn. 
The chief lesson that it has had, in my judgment, is the 
lesson of the art of living—the comforts and the courtesies 
of life, the refinements and the pleasures of conversation 
and of courteous conduct. The upper classes have this 
to teach us; and we need and can learn much from them. 
But this seems to me all—or practically all. What we 
— care most for are individual character, individual develop- 
ment, and a fair chance for every human being. Char- 
acter, of course, the English have—immense character, 
colossal character. But even they have not the dimmest 
conception of what we mean by a fair chance for every 
human being—not the slightest. In one thousand years 
they may learn it from us. Now on the continent, the 
only important Nation that has any character worth 
mentioning is the French. Of course the little nations— 
some of them—have character, such as Holland, Switzer- 
land, Sweden, etc. But these are all. The others are 
simply rotten. In giving a free chance to every human 
creature, we've nothing to learn from anybody. In char- 
acter, I bow down to the English and Scotch; I respect 
the Frenchman highly and admire his good taste. But, 
for our needs and from our point of view, the English can 
teach us only two great lessons—character and the art of 
living (if you are rich). 


134. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


The idea that we were brought up on, therefore, that 
Europe is the home of civilization in general—nonsense! 
It’s a periodical slaughter-pen, with all the vices that this 
implies. I’d as lief live in the Chicago stock-yards. 
There they kill beeves and pigs. Here they kill men and 
(incidentally) women and children. I should no more 
think of encouraging or being happy over a child of mine 
becoming a European of any Nation than I should be 
happy over his fall from Grace in any other way. 

Our form of government and our scheme of society— 
God knows they need improving—are yet so immeasur- 
ably superior, as systems, to anything on this side the 
world that no comparison need be made. 

My first strong impression, then, is not that Europe is 
““effete’’—that isn’t it. It is medizeval—far back toward 
the Dark Ages, much of it yet uncivilized, held back by 
inertia when not held back by worse things. The caste 
system is a constant burden almost as heavy as war itself 
and often quite as cruel. 

The next impression I have is, that, during the thousand 
years that will be required for Europe to attain real (mod- 
ern) civilization, wars will come as wars have always 
come in the past. The different countries and peoples and 
governments will not and cannot learn the lesson of feder- 
ation and codperation so long as a large mass of their 
people have no voice and no knowledge except of their 
particular business. Compare the miles of railway in 
proportion to population with the same proportion in 
the United States—or the telephones, or the use of 
the mails, or of bank checks; or make any other practical 
measure you like. Every time, you'll come back to the 
discouraging fact that the masses in Europe are driven as 
cattle. So long as this is true, of course, they'll be driven 
periodically into wars. Somany countries, so many races, 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 135 


so many languages all within so small an area as Europe 
positively invite deadly differences. If railroads had 
been invented before each people had developed its own 
separate language, Europe could somehow have been 
coordinated, linked up, federated, made to look at life 
somewhat in the same way. As it is, wars will be bred 
here periodically for about another thousand years. The 
devil of this state of things is that they may not always 
be able to keep their wars at home. 

For me, then, except England and the smaller ex- 
ceptions that I have mentioned, Europe will cut no big 
figure in my life. In all the humanities, we are a thousand 
years ahead of any people here. So also in the adaptabil- 
ities and the conveniences of life, in its versatilities and 
in its enjoyments. Most folk are stolid and sad or dull 
on this side of the world. Else how could they take their 
kings and silly ceremonies seriously? 

Now to more immediate and definite impressions. I 
have for a year had the conviction that we ought to get 
into the war—into the economic war—for the following 
among many reasons. 

1. That’s the only way to shorten it. We could cause 
Germany’s credit (such as she has) instantly to collapse, 
and we could hasten her hard times at home which would 
induce a surrender. 

2. That’s the only way we can have any real or im- 
portant influence in adjusting whatever arrangements can 
be made to secure peace. 

3. That’s the best way we can inspire complete respect 
for us in the minds of other nations and thereby, perhaps, 
save ourselves from some wars in the future. 

4. That’s the best way we can assert our own charac- 
ter—our Americanism, and forever get rid of all kinds of 
hyphens. 


136 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


5. That’s the only way we shall ever get a real and 
sensible preparedness, which will be of enormous educa- 
tional value even if no military use should ever be made 
of our preparation. 

6. That’s the only way American consciousness will 
ever get back to the self-sacrificing and patriotic point 
of view of the Fathers of the Republic. 

7. That’s the best way to emancipate ourselves from 
cranks. | 

8. That’s the only way we'll ever awaken in our whole 
people a foreign consciousness that will enable us to assert 
our natural influence in the world—political, fimancial, 
social, commercial—the best way to make the rest of the 
world our customers and friends and followers. 

All the foregoing I have fired at the Great White Chief 
for a year by telegraph and by mail; and I have never 
fired it anywhere else till now. Be very quiet, then. 

No man with whom I have talked or whose writings | 
have read seems to me to have an adequate conception 
of the colossal changes that the war is bringing and will 
bring. Of course, I do not mean to imply that I have any 
adequate conception. Nobody can yet grasp it. The 
loss of (say) ten million men from production of work or 
wares or children; what a changed world that fact alone 
will make! The presence in all Europe of (perhaps) 
fifteen or twenty million more women than men will up- 
set the whole balance of society as regards the sexes. The 
loss of most of the accumulated capital of Kurope and the 
vast burdens of debt for the future to pay will change the 
financial relations of the whole world. From these two 
great losses—men and money—God knows the many 
kinds of changes that will come. Women are doing and 
will continue to do many kinds of work hitherto done by 
men. 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 3% 


Of course there are some great gains. Many a flabby 
or abject fellow will come out of the war a real man: he'll 
be nobody’s slave thereafter. The criminal luxury of the 
rich will not assert itself again for a time. The un- 
paralleled addition to the world’s heroic deeds will be to 
the good of mankind, as the unparalleled suffering has 
eclipsed all records. The survivors will be in an heroic 
mood for the rest of their lives. In general, life will start 
on a new plane and a lot of old stupid habits and old party 
quarrels and class prejudices will disappear. To get 
Europe going again will call for new resolution and a new 
sort of effort. Nobody can yet see what far-reaching 
effects it will have on government. 

If | could make the English and Scotch over, I could 
sreatly improve them. I’d cut out the Englishman’s 
arrogance and key him up to a quicker gait. Lord! he’s 
a slow beast. But he’s worked out the germ and the 
beginning of all real freedom, and he has character. He 
knows how to conserve and to use wealth. He’s a great 
John Bull, after all. And as for commanding the sea, for 
war or trade, you may properly bow down to him and 
pay him homage. The war will, I think, quicken him 
up. It will lessen his arrogance—to us, at least. J think 
it will make him stronger and humbler. And, whatever 
his virtues and his faults, he’s the only Great Power we 
can go hand in hand with. 

These kinds of things have been going on now nearly 
two years, and not till these ten days down here have I 
had time or chance or a free mind to think them over; 
and now there’s nothing in particular to think—nothing 
but just to go on, doing these 40,000 things (and they take 
anew turn every day) the best I can, without the slightest 
regard to consequences. I’ve long ago passed the place 
where, having acted squarely according to my best judg- 


138 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


ment, I can afford to pay the slightest attention to what 
anybody thinks. I see men thrown on the scrap heap 
every day. Many of them deserve it, but a good many 
do not. In the abnormal state of mind that everybody 
has, there are inevitable innocent misunderstandings, 
which are as fatal as criminal mistakes. The diplomatic 
service is peculiarly exposed to misunderstandings: and, 
take the whole diplomatic service of all nations as shown 
up by this great strain, it hasn’t stood the test very well. 
I haven’t the respect for it that I had when I started. 
Yet, God knows, I have a keen sympathy for it. Ive 
seen some of ’em displaced; some of ’em lie down; some 
of ’em die. 

As I’ve got closer and closer to big men, as a rule they 
shrink up. They are very much like the rest. of us— 
many of ’em more so. Human nature is stripped in these 
times of most of its disguises, and men have to stand and 
be judged as a rule by their real qualities. Among all 
the men in high place here, Sir Edward Grey stands out 
in my mind bigger, not smaller, than he stood in the be- 
ginning. He’s a square, honourable gentleman, if there 
is one in this world. And it is he, of course, with whom 
I have had all my troubles. It’s been a truly great ex- 
perience to work and to quarrel with such aman. We've 
kept the best friendship—a constantly ripening one. 
There are others like him—only smaller. 

Yet they are all in turn set upon by the press or public 
opinion and hounded like criminals. They try (some- 
body tries) to drive ’em out of office every once in a while. 
If there’s anything I’m afraid of, it’s the newspapers. 
The correspondents are as thick as flies in summer—all 
hunting sensations—especially the yellow American press. 
J play the game with these fellows always squarely, some- 
times I fear indiscreetly. But whatis discretion? That’s 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 139 


the hardest question of all. We have regular meetings. 
I tell ‘em everything I can—always on the condition that 
I’m kept out of the papers. If they'll never mention 
me, [ll do everything possible for them. Absolute 
silence of the newspapers (as far as I can affect it) is the 
first rule of safety. So far as I know, we’ve done fairly 
well; but always in proportion to silence. I don’t want 
any publicity. I don’t want any glory. I don’t want 
any office. I don’t want nothin’—but to do this job 
squarely, to get out of this scrape, to go off somewhere in 
the sunshine and to see if I can slip back into my old self 
and see the world sane again. Yet I’m immensely proud 
that I have had the chance to do some good—to keep our 
record straight—as far as I can, and to be of what service 
I can to these heroic people. 

Out of it all, one conviction and one purpose grows and 
becomes clearer. The world isn’t yet half-organized. In 
the United States we’ve lived in a good deal of a fool’s 
paradise. The world isn’t half so safe a place as we sup- 
posed. Until steamships and telegraphs brought the 
nations all close together, of course we could enjoy our 
isolation. We can’t do so any longer. One mad fool in 
Berlin has turned the whole earth topsy-turvy. We'd 
forgotten what our forefathers learned—the deadly dan- 
gers of real monarchs and of castes and classes. There 
are a lot of ’em left in the world yet. We've grown rich 
and—weak; we’ve let cranks and old women shape our 
ideas. We've let our politicians remain provincial and 
ignorant. 

And believe me, dear D. P. & Co. with affectionate 
greeting to every one of you and to every one of yours, 
collectively and singly, 


Yours heartily, 
Wale: 


140 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Memorandum written after attending the service at 
St. Paul’s in memory of Lord Kitchener.’ 


American Embassy, London. 

There were two Kitcheners, as every informed person 
knows—(1) the popular hero and (2) the Cabinet Minister 
with whom it was impossible for his associates to get along. 
He made his administrative career as an autocrat dealing 
with dependent and inferior peoples. This experience 
fixed his habits and made it impossible for him to do team 
work or to delegate work or even to inform his associates 
of what he had done or was doing. While, therefore, his 
name raised a great army, he was in many ways a hin- 
drance in the Cabinet. First one thing and then another 
was taken out of his hands—ordnance, munitions, war 
plans. When he went to Gallipoli, some persons pre- 
dicted that he would never come back. There was a hot 
meeting of the Cabinet at which he was asked to go to 
Russia, to make a sort of return visit for the visit that im- 
portant Russians had made here, and to link up Russia’s 
military plans with the plans of the Western Allies. He 
is said to have remarked that he was going only because he 
had been ordered to go. There was a hope and a feeling 
again that he might not come back till after the war. 

Now just how much truth there is in all this, one has 
to guess; but undoubtedly a good deal. He did much in 
raising the army, but his name did more. What an ex- 
traordinary situation! The great hero of the Nation an 
impossible man to work with. The Cabinet could not 
tell the truth about him: the people would not believe it 
and would make the Cabinet suffer. Moreover, such a 
row would have given comfort to the enemy. Kitchener, 





' Drowned on the Hampshire, June 5, 1916, off the coast of Scotland. 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 141 


on his part, could not afford to have an open quarrel. 
The only solution was to induce him to go away for a long 
time. Both sides saw that. Such thoughts were in 
everybody’s mind while the impressive funeral service was 
said and sung in St. Paul’s. The Great Hero, who had 
failed, was celebrated of course as a Great Hero—quite 
truly and yet far from true. For him his death came at 
a lucky time: his work was done. 

There is even a rumour, which I don’t for a moment 
believe, that he is alive on the Orkney Islands and pre- 
fers to disappear there till the war ends. This is fan- 
tastic, and it was doubtless suggested by the story that 
he did disappear for several years while he was a young 
officer. 

I could not help noticing, when I saw all the Cabinet 
together at the Cathedral, how much older many of them 
look than they looked two years ago. Sir Edward Grey, 
Mr. Asquith, Mr. Balfour, who is really an old man, 
Lloyd George—each of these seems ten years older. And 
so does the King. The men in responsible places who are 
not broken by the war will be bent. General French, 
since his retirement to command of the forces in England, 
seems much older. So common is this quick aging that 
Lady Jellicoe, who went to Scotland to see her husband 
after the big naval battle, wrote to Mrs. Page in a sort of 
rhapsody and with evident surprise that the Admiral 
really did not seem older! The weight of this thing is so 
prodigious that it is changing all men who have to do with 
it. Men and women (who do not wear mourning) men- 
tion the death of their sons in a way that a stranger might 
mistake for indifference. And it has a curious effect on 
marriages. Apparently every young fellow who gets a 
week’s leave from the trenches comes home and marries 
and, of course, goes straight back—especially the young 


142 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


officers. You see weddings all day as you pass the favour- 
ite churches; and already the land is full of young widows. 


To Edwin A. Alderman! 


Embassy of the U. 8. A., London, 
June 22, 1916. 
My DEAR Ep ALDERMAN: 

I shall not forget how good you were to take time to 
write me a word about the meeting of the Board—the 
Board: there’s no other one in that class—at Hampton,’ 
and I did most heartily appreciate the knowledge that you 
allremembered me. Alas! it’s a long, long time ago when 
we all met—so long ago that to me it seems a part of a 
former incarnation. ‘These three years—especially these 
two years of the war—have changed my whole outlook on 
life and foreshortened all that came before. I know I 
shall never link back to many things (and alas! too, to 
many people) that once seemed important and surely 
were interesting. Life in these trenches (five warring or 
quarrelling governments mining and sapping under me 
and shooting over me)—two years of universal ambassa- 
dorship in this hell are enough—enough I say, even for 
a man who doesn’t run away from responsibilities or 
weary of toil. And God knows how it has changed me 
and is changing me: I sometimes wonder, as a merely in- 
tellectual and quite impersonal curiosity. 

Strangely enough I keep pretty well—very well, in fact. 
Perhaps I’ve learned how to live more wisely than I knew 
in the old days; perhaps again, I owe it to my old grand- 
father who lived (and enjoyed) ninety-four years. I 





‘President of the University of Virginia. 
*Hampton Institute, at Hampton, Va. 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 143 


have walked ten miles to-day and I sit down as the clock 
strikes eleven (P. M.) to write this letter. 

You will recall more clearly than I certain horrible, 
catastrophic, universal-ruin passages in Revelation— 
monsters swallowing the universe, blood and fire and clouds 
and an eternal crash, rolling ruin enveloping all things— 
well, allthat’s come. There are, perhaps, ten million men 
dead of this war and, perhaps, one hundred million per- 
sons to whom death would be a blessing. Add to these as 
many millions more whose views of life are so distorted that 
blank idiocy would be a better mental outlook, and you'll 
get a hint (and only a hint) of what the continent has 
already become—a bankrupt slaughter-house inhabited 
by unmated women. We have talked of “problems” in 
our day. We never had a problem; for the worst task we 
ever saw was a mere blithe pastime compared with what 
these women and the few men that will remain here must 
face. The hills about Verdun are not blown to pieces 
worse than the whole social structure and intellectual and 
spiritual life of Europe. I wonder that anybody is sane. 

Now we have swung into a period and a state of mind 
wherein all this seems normal. A lady said to me at a 
dinner party (think of a dinner party at all!), “Oh, how 
I shall miss the war when it ends! Life without it will 
surely be dull and tame. What can we talk about? 
Will the old subjects ever interest us again?’ I said, 
*Let’s you and me try and see.’ So we talked about 
books—not war books—old country houses that we both 
knew, gardens and gold and what not; and in fifteen 
minutes we swung back to the war before we were aware. 

I get out of it, as the days rush by, certain fundamental 
convictions, which seem to me not only true—true beyond 
any possible cavil—truer than any other political things 
are true—and far more important than any other con- 


144. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


temporary facts whatsoever in any branch of endeavour, 
but better worth while than anything else that men now 
living may try to further: 

1. The cure for democracy is more democracy. The 
danger to the world lies in autocrats and autocracies and 
privileged classes; and these things have everywhere been 
dangerous and always will be. There’s no security in 
any part of the world where people cannot think of a 
government without a king, and there never willbe. You 
cannot conceive of a democracy that will unprovoked set 
out on a career of conquest. If all our religious mis- 
sionary zeal and cash could be turned into convincing 
Europe of this simple and obvious fact, the longest step 
would be taken for human advancement that has been 
taken since 1776. If Carnegie, or, after he is gone, his 
Peace People could see this, his Trust might possibly do 
some good. 

2. As the world stands, the United States and Great 
Britain must work together and stand together to keep 
the predatory nations in order. A League to Enforce 
Peace and the President’s idea of disentangling alliances 
are all in the right direction, but vague and general and 
cumbersome, a sort of bastard children of Neutrality. 
The thing, the only thing is—a perfect understanding be- 
tween the English-speaking peoples. That’s necessary, 
and that’s all that’s necessary. We must boldly take the 
lead in that. I frankly tell my friends here that the 
English have got to throw away their damned arrogance 
and their insularity and that we Americans have got to 
throw away our provincial ignorance (“‘What is abroad 
to us)’’), hang our Irish agitators and shoot our hyphen- 
ates and bring up our children with reverence for English 
history and in the awe of English literature. This is the 
only job now in the world worth the whole zeal and 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 145 


energy of all first-class, thoroughbred English-speaking 
men. We must lead. We are natural leaders. The 
English must be driven to lead. Item: We must get 
their lads into our universities, ours into theirs. They 
don’t know how to do it, except the little driblet of 
Rhodes men. Think this out, remembering what fools 
we've been about exchange professors with Germany! 
How much good could Fons Smith' do in a thousand 
years, on such an errand as he went on to Berlin? And 
the English don’t know how to do it. They are childish 
(in some things) beyond belief. An Oxford or Cambridge 
man never thinks of going back to his university except 
about twice a lifetime when his college formally asks him 
to come and dine. Then he dines as docilely as a scared 
Freshman. I ama D. C. L. of Oxford. I know a lot of 
their faculty. They are hospitality itself. But Ive 
never yet found out one important fact about the univer- 
sity. They never tell me. I’ve been down at Cam- 
bridge time and again and stayed with the Master of one 
of the colleges. I can no more get at what they do and 
how they do it than I could get at the real meaning of a 
service in a Buddhist Temple. I have spent a good deal 
of time with Lord Rayleigh, who is the Chancellor of 
Cambridge University. Ee never goes there. If he were 
to enter the town, all the men in the university would 
have to stop their work, get on their parade-day gowns, 
line-up by precedent and rank and go to meet him and go 
through days of ceremony and incantations. I think the 
old man has been there once in five years. Now this 
medizevalism must go—or be modified. You fellers who 
have universities must work a real alliance—a big job 
here. But to go on. 


1C. Alphonso Smith, Professor of English, U. S. Naval Academy; Roosevelt 
Professor at Berlin, 1910-11. 


146 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


The best informed English opinion is ripe for a com- 
plete working understanding with us. We've got to 
work up our end—get rid of our ignorance of foreign 
affairs, our shirt-sleeve, complaining kind of diplomacy, 
our sport of twisting the lion’s tail and such things and 
fall to and bring the English out. It’s the one race in 
this world that’s got the guts. 

Hear this in confirmation: I suppose 1,000 English 
women have been to see me—as a last hope—to ask me to 
have inquiries made in Germany about their “missing”’ 
sons or husbands, generally sons. They are of every 
class and rank and kind, from marchioness to scrub- 
woman. Every one tells her story with the same dignity 
of grief, the same marvellous self-restraint, the same 
courtesy and deference and sorrowful pride. Not one 
has whimpered—but one. And it turned out that she was 
a Belgian. It’s the breed. Spartan mothers were theat- 
rical and pinchbeck compared to these women. 

[ know a lady of title, very well to do, who for a year 
got up at 5:30 and drove herself in her own automobile 
from her home in London to Woolwich where she worked 
all day long in a shell factory as a volunteer and got home 
at 8 o’clock at night. At the end of a year they wanted 
her to work in a London place where they keep the records 
of the Woolwich work. “Think of it,’ said she, as she 
shook her enormous diamond ear-rings as I sat next to 
her at dinner one Sunday night not long ago, “think of 
it—what an easy time I now have. I don’t have to 
start till half-past seven and I get home at half-past 
Sixlie 

I could fill forty pages with stories like these. This 
very Sunday I went to see a bedridden old lady who 
sent me word that she had something to tell me. Here 
it was: An English flying man’s machine got out of order 


A PERPLEXED AMBASSADOR 147 


and he had to descend in German territory. The Ger- 
mans captured him and his machine. They ordered him 
to take two of their flying men in his machine to show 
them a particular place in the English lines. He de- 
clined. “Very well, we'll shoot you, then.’’ At last he 
consented. The three started. The Englishman quietly 
strapped himself in. There were no straps for the two 
Germans. The Englishman looped-the-loop. The Ger- 
mans fell out. The Englishman flew back home. ‘‘My 
son has been to see me from France. He told me that. 
He knows the man’’—thus said the old lady and thanked 
me for coming to hear it! She didn’t know that the 
story has been printed. 

But the real question is, ““How are you?” Do you 
keep strong? Able, without weariness, to keep up your 
good work? I heartily hope so, old man. Take good 
care of yourself—very. 

My love to Mrs. Alderman. Please don’t quote me— 
yet. I have to be very silent publicly about everything. 
After March 4th, I shall again be free. 

Yours always faithfully, 
Wok: 


CHAPTER XIX 
WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 


I 


N JULY Page received a cablegram summoning him to 

Washington. This message did not explain why his 
presence was desired, nor on this point was Page ever 
definitely enlightened, though there were more or less 
vague statements that a “change of atmosphere” might 
better enable the Ambassador to understand the problems 
which were then engrossing the State Department. 

The President had now only a single aim in view. From 
the date of the so-called Sussex “pledge,” May 4, 1916, 
until the resumption of submarine warfare on February 1, 
1917, Mr. Wilson devoted all his energies to bringing the 
warring powers together and establishing peace. More 
than one motive was inspiring the President in this de- 
termination. That this policy accorded with his own 
idealistic tendencies is true, and that he aspired to a 
position in history as the great ** peace maker ”’ is probably 
the fact, but he had also more immediate and practical 
purposes in mind. Above all, Mr. Wilson was bent on 
keeping the United States out of the war; he knew that 
there was only one certain way of preserving peace in 
this country, and that was by bringing the war itself to 
anend. ‘An early peace is all that can prevent the Ger- 
mans from driving us at last into the war,” Page wrote 
at about this time; and this single sentence gives the key 
to the President’s activities for the succeeding nine 
months. The negotiations over the Sussex had taught 

148 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 149 


Mr. Wilson this truth. He understood that the pledge 
which the German Government had made was only a 
conditional one; that the submarine campaign had been 
suspended only for the purpose of giving the United 
States a breathing spell during which it could persuade 
Great Britain and France to make peace. 

“T repeat my proposal,’ Bernstorff cabled his govern- 
ment on April 26,' “to suspend the submarine war at 
least for the period of negotiations. This would remove 
all danger of a breach [with the United States] and also 
enable Wilson to continue his labours in his great plan of 
bringing about a peace based upon the freedom of the 
seas—i. e., that for the future trade shall be free from all 
interference in time of war. According to the assurances 
which Wilson, through House, has given me, he would in 
that case take in hand measures directly against England. 
He is, however, of the opinion that it would be easier to 
bring about peace than to cause England to abandon the 
blockade. This last could only be brought about by 
war and it is well known that the means of war are lack- 
ing here. A prohibition of exports as a weapon against 
the blockade is not possible as the prevailing prosperity 
would suffer by it. 

“The inquiries made by House have led Wilson to be- 
lieve that our enemies would not be unwilling to consider 
peace. In view of the present condition of affairs, I 
repeat that there is only one possible course, namely, 
that Your Excellency [Von Jagow] empower me to declare 
that we will enter into negotiations with the United 
States touching the conduct of the submarine war while 
the negotiations are proceeding. This would give us 
the advantage that the submarine war, being over Mr. 





1This is quoted from a hitherto unpublished despatch of Bernstorff’s to Berlin 
which is found among Page’s papers. 


150 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Wilson’s head, like the sword of Damocles, would compel 
him at once to take in hand the task of mediation.” 

This dispatch seems sufficiently to explain all the 
happenings of the summer and winter of 1916-1917. It 
was sent to Berlin on April 26th; the German Government 
gave the Sussex“ pledge’’on May 4th, eight days afterward. 
In this reply Germany declared that she would now ex- 
pect Mr. Wilson to bring pressure upon Great Britain 
to secure a mitigation or suspension of the British block- 
ade, and to this Mr. Wilson promptly and energetically 
replied that he regarded the German promise as an un- 
conditional one and that the Government of the United 
States “cannot for a moment entertain, much less dis- 
cuss, a suggestion that respect by German naval author- 
ities for the rights of citizens of the United States upon 
the high seas should in any way or in the slightest degree 
be made contingent upon the conduct of any other goy- 
ernment affecting the rights of neutrals and non-combat- 
ants. Responsibility in such matters is single not joint; 
absolute not relative.” 

This reply gave satisfaction to both the United States 
and the countries of the Allies, and Page himself regarded 
it asa master stroke. ‘The more I think of it,” he wrote 
on May 17th, “the better the strategy of the President 
appears, in his latest (and last) note to Germany. They 
laid a trap for him and he caught them in their own trap. 
The Germans had tried to “put it up’ to the President to 
commit the first unfriendly act. He now ‘puts it up’ to 
them. And this is at last bound to end the controversy 
if they smk another ship unlawfully. The French see 
this clearly and so do the best English, and it has pro- 
duced a most favourable impression. The future? The 
German angling for peace will prove futile. They'll have 
another fit of fury. Whether they will again become 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 151 


reckless or commit ‘mistakes’ with their submarines will 
depend partly on their fury, partly on their fear to make 
a breach with the United States, but mainly on the state 
of their submarine fleet. How many have the English 
caught and destroyed? That’s the main question, after 
all. The English view may not be fair to them. But 
nobody here believes that they will long abstain from the 
luxury of crime.” 

It is thus apparent that when the Germans practically 
demanded, as a price of their abstention from indis- 
criminate submarine warfare, that Mr. Wilson should 
move against Great Britain in the matter of the blockade, 
they realized the futility of any such step, and that what 
they really expected to obtain was the presidential 
mediation for peace. President Wilson at once began to 
move in this direction. On May 27th, three weeks after 
the Sussex * pledge,’ he made an address in Washington 
before the League to Enforce Peace, which was intended to 
lay the basis for his approaching negotiations. It was in 
this speech that he made the statement that the United 
States was “not concerned with the causes and the ob- 
jects” of the war. “The obscure fountains from which 
its stupendous flood has burst forth we are not interested 
to search for or to explain.”” This was another of those 
unfortunate sentences which made the President such an 
unsympathetic figure in the estimation of the Allies and 
seemed to indicate to them that he had no appreciation 
of the nature of the struggle. Though this attitude of 
non-partisanship, of equal balance between the accusa- 
tions of the Allies and Germany, was intended to make 
the President acceptable as a mediator, the practical re- 
sult was exactly the reverse, for Allied statesmen turned 
from Wilson as soon as those sentences appeared in print. 
The fact that this same oration specified the “freedom of 


152 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


the seas”’ as one of the foundation rocks of the proposed 
new settlement only accentuated this unfavourable at- 
titude. 

This then was clearly the “‘atmosphere” which pre- 
vailed in Washington at the time that Page was sum- 
moned home. But Page’s letters of this period indicate 
how little sympathy he entertained for such negotiations. 
“It is quite apparent,” he had recently written to Colonel 
House, “that nobody in Washington understands the 
war. Come over and find out.”’ Extracts from a letter 
which he wrote to his brother, Mr. Henry A. Page, of 
Aberdeen, North Carolina, are especially interesting when 
placed side by side with the President’s statements of 
this particular time. These passages show that a two 
years’ close observation of the Prussians in action had not 
changed Page’s opinion of their motives or of their 
methods; in 1916, as in 1914, Page could see in this 
struggle nothing but a colossal buccaneering expedition 
on the part of Germany. “As I look at it,’ he wrote, 
“our dilly-dallying is likely to get us into war. The 
Germans want somebody to rob—to pay their great 
military bills. They’ve robbed Belgium and are still 
robbing it of every penny they can lay their hands 
on. They robbed Poland and Serbia—two very poor 
countries which didn’t have much. They set out to 
rob France and have so far been stopped from getting 
to Paris. If they got to Paris there wouldn’t be 
thirty cents’ worth of movable property there in a week, 
and they’d levy fines of millions of francs a day. Their 
military scheme and teaching and open purpose is to make 
somebody pay for their vast military outlay of the last 
forty years. They must do that or go bankrupt. Now it 
looks as if they would go bankrupt. But in a little while 
they may be able to bombard New York and demand 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 as 


billions of dollars to refrain from destroying the city. 
That’s the richest place left to spoil. 

‘Now they say that—quite openly and quite frankly. 
Now if we keep ‘neutral’ to a highwayman—what do we 
get for our pains? ‘That’s the mistake we are making. 
If we had sent Bernstorff home the day after the Lusitania 
was sunk and recalled Gerard and begun to train an army 
we'd have had no more trouble with them. But since 
they have found out that they can keep us discussing 
things forever and a day, they will keep us discussing 
things till they are ready. We are very simple; and we'll 
get shot for it yet. : 

“The prestige and fear ‘GE the United States has gone 
down, down, down—disappeared; and we are regarded as 
‘discussors,’ incapable of action, scared to death of war. 
That’s all the invitation that robbers, whose chief busi- 
ness is war, want—all the invitation they need. These 
devils are out for robbery—and you don’t seem to believe 
it in the United States: that’s the queer thing. This 
neutrality business makes us an easy mark. As soon as 
they took a town in Belgium, they asked for all the money 
in the town, all the food, all the movable property; and 
they've levied a tax every month since on every town and 
made the town government borrow the money to pay it. 
If a child in a town makes a disrespectful remark, they fine 
the town an extra $1,000. They haven't got enough so 
far to keep them going flush; and they won’t unless they 
get Paris—which they can’t do now. If they got London, 
they'd be rich; they wouldn’t leave a shilling and they'd 
make all the rich English get all the money they own 
abroad. ‘This is the reason that Frenchmen and English- 
men prefer to be killed by the 100,000. In the country 
over which their army has passed a crow would die of 
starvation and no human being has ten cents of real 


154 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


money. The Belgian Commission is spending more than 
100 million dollars a year to keep the Belgians alive—only 
because they are robbed every day. ‘They have a rich 
country and could support themselves but for these rob- 
bers. That’s the meaning of the whole thing. And yet 
we treat them as if they were honourable people. It’s 
only a question of time and of power when they will attack 
us, or the Canal, or South America. Everybody on this 
side the world knows that. And they are ‘yielding’ to 
keep us out of this war so that England will not 
help us when they (the Germans) get ready to attack 
America. 

There is the strangest infatuation in the United States 
with Peace—the strangest illusion about our safety with- 
out preparation.” 


Several letters:to Colonel House show the state of the 
British mind on the subject of the President’s peace pro- 
posals: 


To Edward M. House 
Royal Bath and East Cliff Hotel, 


Bournemouth, 


23 May, 1916. 
Dear House: 


The motor trip that the Houses, the Wallaces, and the 
Pages took about a year ago was the last trip (three days) 
that I had had out of London; and I’d got pretty tired. 
The China case having been settled (and settled as we 
wanted it), I thought it a good time to try to get away 
for a week. So here Mrs. Page and I are—very much to 
my benefit. I’ve spent a beautiful week out of doors, on 
this seashore; and I have only about ten per cent. of the 
fatal diseases that I had a week ago. That is to say, I’m 
as sound as a dollar and feel like a fighting cock. 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 155 


Sir Edward was fine about the China’ case. He never 
disputed the principle of the inviolability of American 
ships on the high seas; but the Admiralty maintained that 
some of these men are officers in the German Army and 
are now receiving officers’ pay. I think that that is prob- 
ably true. Nevertheless, the Admiralty had bungled the 
case badly and Sir Edward simply rode over them. They 
have a fine quarrel among themselves and we got all we 
wanted and asked for. 

Of course, I can’t make out the Germans but I am afraid 
some huge deviltry is yet coming. When the English 
say that the Germans must give up their militarism, I 
doubt if the Germans yet know what they mean. They 
talk about conquered territory—Belgium, Poland, and the 
rest. It hasn’t entered their heads that they've got to 
give up their armies and their military system. When 
this does get into their heads, if it ever do, I think they 
may so swell with rage at this “insult”’ that they may 
break loose in one last desperate effort, ignoring the United 
States, defying the universe, running amuck. Of course it 
would be foolhardy to predict this, but the fear of it keeps 
coming into my mind. ‘The fear is the more persistent 
because, if the worst comes to them, the military caste and 
perhaps the dynasty itself will prefer to die in one last ter- 
rific onslaught rather than to make a peace on terms which 
will require the practical extinction of their supreme power. 
This, I conceive, is the really great danger that yet awaits 
the world—if the Allies hold together till defeat and 
famine drive the Germans to the utmost desperation. 

In the meantime, the Allies still holding together as 


1The China case was a kind of Trent case reversed. In 1861 the American 
ship San Jacinto stopped the British vessel Trent and took off Mason and Slidell, 
Confederate commissioners to Great Britain. Similarly a British ship, in 1916, 
stopped an American ship, the China, and removed several German subjects. 
As the British quickly saw the analogy, and made suitable amends, the old excite- 
ment over the Trent was not duplicated in the recent war. 


156 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


they are, there’s no peace yet in the British and French 
minds. They’re after the militarism of Prussia—not 
territory or other gains; and they seem likely to get it, 
as much by the blockade as by victories on land. Do 
you remember how in the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck 
refused to deal with the French Emperor? He demanded 
that representatives of the French people should deal with 
him. He got what he asked for and that was the last of 
the French Emperor. Neither the French nor the Eng- 
lish have forgotten that. You will recall that the Ger- 
mans starved Paris into submission. Neither the French 
nor the English have forgotten that. These two leaves out 
of the Germans’ own book of forty-five years ago—these 
two and no more—may be forced on the Germans them- 
selves. They are both quite legitimate, too. You can 
read a recollection of both these events between the lines 
of the interviews that Sir Edward and Mr. Balfour recently 
gave to American newspapers. 

There is nothing but admiration here for the strategy 
of the President’s last note to Germany. That was the 
cleverest play made by anybody since the war began— 
clever beyond praise. Now he’s “got ’em.” But nobody 
here doubts that they will say, sooner or later, that the 
United States, not having forced the breaking of the 
British blockade, has not kept its bargain—that’s what 
they ll say—and it is in order again to run amuck. This 
is what the English think—provided the Germans have 
enough submarines left to keep up realdamage. By that 
time, too, it will be clear to the Germans that the Presi- 
dent can’t bring peace so long as only one side wishes peace. 
The Germans seem to have counted much on the Irish 
uprising, which came to pass at all only because of the 
customary English stupid bungling; and the net result has 
been only to put the mass of the Irish on their mettle to 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 157 


show that they are not Sinn Feiners. The final upshot 
will be to strengthen the British Army. God surely is 
good to this bungling British Government. Wind and 
wave and the will of High Heaven seem to work for them. 
I begin to understand their stupidity and their arrogance. 
If your enemies are such fools in psychological tactics and 
Heaven is with you, why take the trouble to be alert? 
And why be modest? Whatever the reason, these Eng- 
lish are now more cocky and confident than they’ve been 
before since the war began. ‘They are beginning to see 
results. ‘The only question seems to be to hold the Allies 
together, and they seem to be doing that. In fact, the 
battle of Verdun has cemented them. ‘They now have 
visible proof that the German Army is on the wane. And 
they have trustworthy evidence that the blockade is tell- 
ing severely on the Germans. Nobody, I think, expects 
to thrash ’em to a frazzle; but the almost universal opin- 
ion here is that the hold of militarism will be shaken loose. 
And the German High Canal Navy—what’s to become 
of that? Von Tirpitz is down and out, but there are 
thousands of Germans, I hear, who complain of their 
naval inactivity. But God only knows the future— 
I don’t. I think that I do well if I keep track of the 
DLCSCI bam eye) \s 
My kindest regards to Mrs. House, 
Yours very heartily, 
We HP: 


To Edward M. House 


London, 25 May, 1916. 
DEAR House: 
No utterance by anybody has so stirred the people of 
this kingdom for many months as Sir Edward Grey’s 
impromptu speech last night in the House of Commons 


158 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


about Peace, when he called the German Chancellor a 
first-class liar. I sent you to-day a clipping from one of 
the morning papers. Every paper I pick up compli 
ments Sir Edward. Everyone says, “We must fight 
to a finish.” The more sensational press intimates that 
any Englishman who uses the word “peace” ought 
to be shot. You have never seen such a rally as that 
which has taken place in response to Sir Edward’s cry. 
In the first place, as you know, he is the most gentle of all 
the Cabinet, the last man to get on a “ war-rampage,’’ the 
least belligerent and rambunctious of the whole lot. When 
he felt moved to say that there can be no peace till the 
German military despotism is broken, everybody from 
one end of the Kingdom to the other seems to have thrown 
up his hat and applauded. Except the half-dozen peace- 
cranks in the House (Bryan sort of men) you can’t find 
a man, woman, child, or dog that isn’t fired with the de- 
termination to see the war through. The continued talk 
about peace which is reported directly and indirectly from 
Germany—coming from Switzerland, from Rome, from 
Washington—has made the English and the French very 
anery: no, “angry” isn’t quite the right word. It has 
made them very determined. They feel insulted by the 
impudence of the Germans, who, since they know they 
are bound to lose, seem to be turning heaven and 
earth to induce neutrals to take their view of peace. 
People are asking here, “If they are victorious, why 
doesn’t their fleet come out of the canal and take the seas, 
and again open their commerce? Why do they whimper 
about the blockade when they will not even risk a warship 
to break it?’”? You'll recall how the talk here used to be 
that the English wouldn’t wake up. You wouldn’t know 
‘em now. Your bulldog has got his grip and even thun- 
der doesn’t disturb him. 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 159 


Incidentally, all the old criticism of Sir Edward Grey 
seems to have been forgotten. You hear nothing 
but praise of him now. I am told that he spoke 
his impromptu speech last night with great fire and 
at once left the House. His speech has caused a greater 
stir than the Irish rebellion, showing that every English- 
man feels that Sir Edward said precisely what every man 
feels. 

The Germans have apparently overdone and over- 
worked their premature peace efforts and have made 
things worse for them. They've overplayed their 
hand. 

In fact, I see no end of the war. The Allies are 
not going to quit prematurely. They won’t even dis- 
cuss the subject yet with one another, and the Germans, 
by their peace-talk of the sort that they inspire, simply 
postpone the day when the Allies will take the subject 
up. 
All the while, too, the Allies work closer and closer 
together. They'll soon be doing even their diplomatic 
work with neutrals, as a unit—England and France as one 
nation, and (on great subjects) Russia and Italy also 
with them. 

I’ve talked lately not only with Sir Edward but with 
nearly half the other members of the Cabinet, and they 
are all keyed up to the same tune. ‘The press of both 
parties, too, are (for once) wholly agreed: Liberal and 
Conservative papers alike hold the same war-creed. 

Sincerely yours, 
Wa rer H. Paar. 


Before leaving for Washington Page discussed the 
situation personally with Sir Edward Grey and Lord 
Bryce. He has left memoranda of both interviews. 


160 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Notes of a Private and Informal Conversation with 
Sir Edward Grey, at his residence, on July 27, 1916, when 
I called to say good-bye before sailing on leave to the United 
States 


Sir Edward Grey went on to say quite 
revaltiee that two thoughts expressed in a speech by the 
President some months ago had had a very serious influ- 
ence on British opinion. One thought was that the causes 
or objects of the war were of no concern to him, and the 
other was his (at least implied) endorsement of “the free- 
dom of the seas,’’ which the President did not define. 

Concerning the first thought, he understood of course 
that a neutral President could not say that he favoured 
one side or the other: everybody understood that and no- 
body expected him to take sides. But when the Presi- 
dent said that the objects of the war did not concern him, 
that was taken by British public opinion as meaning a 
condemnation of the British cause, and it produced deep 
feeling. 

Concerning the “‘freedom of the seas,”’ he believed that 
the first use of the phrase was made by Colonel House 
(on his return from one of his visits to Berlin),’ but the 
public now regarded it as a German invention and it 
meant to the British mind a policy which would render 
British supremacy at sea of little value in time of war; and 
public opinion resented this. He knew perfectly well that 
at a convenient time new rules must be made govern- 
ing the conduct of war at sea and on the land, too. But 
the German idea of “the freedom of the seas”’ (‘‘freedom”’ 
was needed on land also) is repulsive to the British 
mind. 

He mentioned these things because they had produced 
~ 1See Chapter XIII, page 434. 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 161 


in many minds an unwillingness, he feared, to use the good 
offices of the President whenever any mediatorial service 
might be done by a neutral. The tendency of these 
remarks was certainly in that direction. Yet Sir Ed- 
ward carefully abstained from expressing such an unwill- 
ingness on his own part, and the inference from his tone 
and manner, as well as from his habitual attitude, is that 
he feels no unwillingness to use the President’s good office, 
if occasion should arise. 

I asked what he meant by “mediatorial’’—the Presi- 
dent’s offering his services or good offices on his own 
initiative? He said—No, not that. But the Germans 
might express to the President their willingness or even 
their definite wish to have an armistice, on certain terms, 
to discuss conditions of peace coupled with an intimation 
that he might sound the Allies. He did not expect the 
President to act on his own initiative, but at the request or 
at least at the suggestion of the German Government, he 
might conceivably sound the Allies—especially, he added, 
“since I am informed that the notion is wide-spread in 
America that the war will end inconclusively—as a draw.” 
He smiled and remarked, as an aside, that he didn’t think 
that this notion was held by any considerable group of 
people in any other country, certainly not in Great 
Britain. 

In further talk on this subject he said that none of the 
Allies could mention peace or discuss peace till France 
should express such a wish; for it is the very vitals of 
France that have received and are receiving the shock 
of such an assault as was never before launched against 
any nation. Unless France was ready to quit, none of 
France’s Allies could mention peace, and France showed 
no mood to quit. Least of all could the English make or 
receive any such suggestion at least till her new great army 


162 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


had done its best; for until lately the severest fighting had 
not been done by the British, whose army had practically 
been held in reserve. There had for a long time been a 
perfect understanding between Joffre and Haig—that the 
English would wait to begin their offensive till the moment 
arrived when it best suited the French. 

The impression that I got from this part of the conver- 
sation was that Sir Edward hoped that I might convey to 
the President (as, of course, he could not) Sir Edward’s 
idea of the effect of these parts of the President’s speech on 
feeling in England toward him. Nowhere in the conver- 
sation did he make any request of me. Any one, over- 
hearing it, might have supposed it to be a conversation 
between two men, with no object beyond expressing their 
views. But, of course, he hoped and meant that I should, 
in my own way, make known to the President what he 
said. He did not say that the President’s good offices, 
when the time should come, would be unwelcome to him 
or to his government; and he meant, I am sure, to convey 
only the fear that by these assertions the President had 
planted an objection to his good offices in a large section 
of British opinion. 

Among the conditions of peace that Sir Edward himself 
personally would like to see imposed (he had not yet 
discussed the subject with any of his colleagues in the 
Government) was this: that the German Government 
should agree to submit to an impartial (neutral) com- 
mission or court the question, Who began the war and 
who is responsible for it? The German Chancellor and 
other high German officials have put it about and continue 
to put it about that England is responsible, and doubtless 
the German people at least believe it. All the govern- 
ments concerned must (this is his idea) submit to the 
tribunal all its documents and other evidence bearing on 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 163 


the subject; and of course the finding of the tribunal must 
be published. 

Then he talked a good deal about the idea that lies be- 
hind the League for Enforcing Peace—in a sympathetic 
mood. He went on to point out how such a league— 
with force behind it—would at any one of three stages 
have prevented this war—(1) When England proposed 
a conference to France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, all 
agreed to it but Germany. Germany alone prevented 
a discussion. If the ‘League to Enforce Peace had in- 
cluded England, France, Italy, and Russia—there would 
have been no war; for Germany would have seen at once 
that they would all be against her. (2) Later, when the 
Czar sent the Kaiser a personal telegram proposing to 
submit their differences to some tribunal, a League to 
Enforce Peace would have prevented war. And (3) when 
the question of the invasion of Belgium came up, every 
signatory to the treaty guaranteeing Belgium’s integrity 
gave assurance of keeping the treaty—but Germany, 
and Germany gave an evasive answer. A league would 
again have prevented a war—or put all the military force 
of all its members against Germany. 

Throughout the conversation, which lasted about an 
hour, Sir Edward said more than once, as he has often said 
to me, that he hoped we should be able to keep the friction 
between our governments at the minimum. He would 
regard it as the greatest calamity if the ill-feeling that 
various events have stirred up in sections of public opinion 
on each side should increase or should become permanent. 
His constant wish and effort were to lessen and if possible 
to remove all misunderstandings. 


Lord Bryce was one of the Englishmen with whom Page 
vas especially inclined to discuss pending problems. 


164 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Notes on a conversation with Lord Bryce, 
July 31, 1916 


Lord Bryce spoke of the President’s declaration that we 
were not concerned with the causes or objects of the war 
and he said that that remark had caused much talk—all, 
as he thought, on a misunderstanding of Mr. Wilson’s 
meaning. ‘‘He meant, I take it, only that he did not 
propose at that time to discuss the causes or the objects of 
the war; and it is a pity that his sentence was capable of 
being interpreted to mean something else; and the sen- 
tence was published and discussed here apart from its 
context—a most unfair proceeding. I can imagine that 
the President and his friends may be much annoyed by 
this improper interpretation.” 

I remarked that the body of the speech in which this 
remark occurred might have been written in Downing 
Street, so friendly was it to the Allies. 

‘Quite, quite,” said he. 

This was at dinner, Lady Bryce and Mrs. Page and he 
and I only being present. 

When he and I went into the library he talked more 
than an hour. 

“And what about this blacklist?” he asked. I told 
him. He had been in France for a week and did not know 
just what had been done. He said that that seemed to 
him a mistake. “‘The Government doesn’t know Amer- 
ica—neither does the British public. Neither does the 
American Government (no American government) know 
the British. Hence your government writes too many 
notes—all governments are likely to write too many notes. 
Everybody gets tired of seeing them and they lose their 
effect.” 

He mentioned the blockade and said that it had be- 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 165 


come quite effective—wonderfully effective, in fact; and he 
implied that he did not see why we now failed to recog- 
nize it. Our refusal to recognize it had caused and 
doubtless is now causing such ill-feeling as exists in Eng- 
land. 

Then he talked long about peace and how it would prob- 
ably be arranged. He judged, from letters that he re- 
ceives from the United States as well as from Americans 
who come over here, that there was an expectation in 
America that the President would be called in at the peace 
settlement and that some persons even expected him to 
offer mediation. He did not see how that could be. He 
knew no precedent for such a proceeding. The President 
might, of course, on the definite request of either side, 
make a definite inquiry of the other side; but such a course 
would be, in effect, merely the transmission of an inquiry. 

But after peace was made and the time came to set 
up a League for Enforcing Peace, or some such machin- 
ery, of course the United States would be and would have 
to be a party to that if it were to succeed. He reminded 
me that a little group of men here, of whom he was one, 
early in the war sketched substantially the same plan 
that the American League to Enforce Peace has worked 
out. It had not seemed advisable to have any general 
public discussion of it in England till the war should end: 
nobody had time now to give to it. 

As he knew no precedent for belligerents to call in a 
third party when they met to end a war, so he knew no 
precedent for any outside government to protest against 
the invasion of a country by a Power that had signed 
a treaty to guarantee the integrity of the invaded coun- 
try—no precedent, that is to say, for the United States to 
protest against the invasion of Belgium. “That prece- 
dent,” I said, “‘was found in Hysteria.”’ 


166 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Lord Bryce, who had just returned from a visit to the 
British headquarters in France, hardly dared hope for the 
end of the war till next year; and the intervening time 
between now and the end would be a time, he feared, of 
renewed atrocities and increasing hatred. He cited the 
killing of Captain Fryatt of the Brussels and the forcible 
deportation of young women from Lille and other towns 
in the provinces of France occupied by the Germans. 

The most definite idea that he had touching American- 
British relations was the fear that the anti-British feeling 
in the United States would become stronger and would 
outlast the war. “It is organized,” he said. “The dis- 
affected Germans and the disaffected Irish are interested 
in keeping it up.”’ He asked what effect I thought the 
Presidential campaign would have on this feeling. He 
seemed to have a fear that somehow the campaign would 
give an occasion for stirrmg it up even more. 

“Good-bye. Give my regards to all my American 
friends; and I’m proud to say there are a good many of 
them.” 


One episode that was greatly stirring both Great Brit- 
ain and the United States at this time was the trial of Sir 
Roger Casement, the Irish leader who had left Wilhelms- 
haven for Ireland in a German submarine and who had 
been captured at Tralee in the act of landing arms and 
munitions for an Irish insurrection. Casement’s subse- 
quent trial and conviction on a charge of high treason had 
inspired a movement in his favour from Irish-Americans, 
the final outcome of which was that the Senate, in early 
August, passed a resolution asking the British Govern- 
ment for clemency and stipulating that this resolution 
should be presented to the Foreign Office. Page was 
then on the ocean bound for the United States and 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 167 


the delicate task of presenting this document to Sir 
Edward Grey fell upon Mr. Laughlin, who was now 
Charge d'affaires. Mr. Laughlin is a diplomat of great 
experience, but this responsibility at first seemed to be 
something of a poser even for him. He had received ex- 
plicit instructions from Washington to present this resolu- 
tion, and the one thing above all which a diplomatic officer 
must do is to carry out the orders of his government, but 
Mr. Laughlin well knew that, should he present this paper 
in the usual manner, the Foreign Secretary might decline 
to receive it; he might regard it as an interference with 
matters that exclusively concerned the sovereign state. 
Mr. Laughlin, however, has a technique all his own, and, 
in accordance with this, he asked for an interview with Sir 
Edward Grey to discuss a matter of routine business. 
However, the Chargé d’affaires carried the Casement 
resolution tucked away in an inside pocket when he made 
his call. 

Like Mr. Page, Mr. Laughlin was on the friendliest terms 
with Sir Edward Grey, and, after the particular piece of 
business had been transacted, the two men, as usual, fell 
into casual conversation. Casement then loomed large 
in the daily press, and the activities of the American Senate 
had likewise caused some commotion in London. In 
round-about fashion Mr. Laughlin was able to lead Sir 
Edward to make some reference to the Casement case.’ 

“I see the Senate has passed a resolution asking clem- 
ency,’ said the Foreign Secretary—exactly the remark 
which the American wished to elicit. 

“Yes,” was the reply. “By the way, I happen to have 
a copy of the resolution with me. May I give it to you?” 

“Yes, E should like to have it.” 

The Foreign Secretary read it over with deliberation. 

* This is a very interesting document,” he said, when he 


168 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


had finished. “Would you have any objection if I 
showed it to the Prime Minister?” 

Of course that was precisely what Mr. Laughlin did wish, 
and he replied that this was the desire of his government. 
The purpose of his visit had been accomplished, and he 
was able to cable Washington that its instructions had 
been carried out and that the Casement resolution had 
been presented to the British Government. Simultane- 
ously with his communication, however, he reported also 
that the execution of Roger Casement had taken place. 
In fact, it was being carried out at the time of the interview. 
This incident lends point to Page’s memorandum of the 
last interview which he had before leaving England. 


August Ist. I lunched with Mr. Asquith. One does 
not usually bring away much from his conversations, and 
he did not say much to-day worth recording. But he 
showed a very eager interest in the Presidential campaign, 
and he confessed that he felt some anxiety about the anti- 
British feeling in the United States. This led him to tell 
me that he could not in good conscience interfere with 
Casement’s execution, in spite of the shoals of telegrams 
that he was receiving from the United States. This man, 
said he, visited Irish prisoners in German camps and tried 
to seduce them to take up arms against Great Britain— 
their own country. When they refused, the Germans 
removed them to the worst places in their Empire and, as a 
result, some of them died. Then Casement came to Ireland 
in a German man-of-war (a submarine) accompanied by 
a ship loaded with guns. “In all good conscience to my 
country and to my responsibilities [ cannot interfere.”” He 
hoped that thoughtful opinion in the United States would 
see this whole matter in a fair and just way. 

I asked him about anti-American feeling in Great Brit- 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 169 


ain. He said: “Do not let that unduly disturb you. At 
bottom we understand you. At bottom the two people 
surely understand one another and have unbreakable 
bonds of sympathy. No serious breach is conceivable.” 
He went on quite earnestly: “Mr. Page, after any policy 
or plan is thought out on its merits my next thought al- 
ways is how it may affect our relations with the United 
States. That is always a fundamental consideration.” 

I ventured to say that if he would keep our relations 
smooth on the surface, I’d guarantee their stability at the 
bottom. It’s the surface that rolls high at times, and the 
danger is there. Keep the surface smooth and the bottom 
will take care of itself. 

Then he asked about Mexico, as he usually has when 
I have talked with him. I gave him as good a report as I 
could, reminding him of the great change in the attitude of 
all Latin-America caused by the President’s patient policy 
with Mexico. When he said, ** Mexico is a bad problem,”’ 
I couldn’t resist the impulse to reply: “When Mexico 
troubles you, think of—Ireland. As there are persons in 
England who concern themselves with Mexico, so there 
are persons in the United States who concern themselves 
about Ireland. Ireland and Mexico have each given 
trouble for two centuries. Yet these people talk about 
them as if they could remove all trouble in a month.” 

‘Quite true,” he said, and smiled himself into silence. 
Then he talked about more or less frivolous subjects; and, 
as always, he asked about Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt, 
‘alike now, I suppose, in their present obscure plight.” 
I told him I was going from his house to the House of 
Lords to see Sir Edward Grey metamorphosed into Vis- 
count Grey of Fallodon. 

“The very stupidest of the many stupid ceremonies that 
we have,” said he—very truly. 


{70 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


He spoke of my “onerous duties” and so on and so on— 
tut, tut! talk that gets nowhere. But he did say, quite 
sincerely, [ think, that my frankness called forth frankness 
and avoided misunderstanding; for he has said that to 
other people about me. 

Such is the Prime Minister of Great Britain in this 
supreme crisis in English history, a remarkable man, of an 
abnormally quick mind, pretty nearly a great man, but 
now a spent force, at once nimble and weary. History 
may call him Great. If it do, he will owe this judgment 
to the war, with the conduct of which his name will be 
forever associated. 


If 


Mr. and Mrs. Page’s homecoming was a tragedy. They 
sailed from Liverpool on August 3rd, and reached New 
York on the evening of August llth. But sad news 
awaited them upon the dock. About two months previ- 
ously their youngest son, Frank, had been married to 
Miss Katherine Sefton, of Auburn, N. Y., and the young 
couple had settled down in Garden City, Long Island. 
That was the summer when the epidemic of infantile 
paralysis swept over the larger part of the United States. 
The young bride was stricken; the case was unusually 
rapid and unusually severe; at the moment of the Pages’ 
arrival, they were informed that there was practically no 
hope; and Mrs. Frank Page died at two o'clock on the 
afternoon of the following day. The Pages had always 
been a particularly united and happy family; this was the 
first time that they had suffered from any domestic sorrow 
of this kind, and the Ambassador was so affected that it 
was with difficulty that he could summon himself for the 
task that lay ahead. 

In a few days, however, he left for Washington. He has 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 iat 


himself described his experience at the Capital in words 
that must inevitably take their place in history. To ap- 
preciate properly the picture which Page gives, it must be 
remembered that the city and the officialdom which he 
portrays are the same city and the same men who six 
months afterward declared war on Germany. When 
Page reached Washington, the Presidential campaign was 
in full swing, with Mr. Wilson as the Democratic candidate 
and Mr. Charles EK. Hughes as the Republican. But 
another crisis was absorbing the nation’s attention: the 
railway unions, comprising practically all the 2,000,000 
railway employees in the United States, were threatening 
to strike—ostensibly for an eight-hour day, in reality 
for higher wages. 


Mr. Page’s memorandum of his visit to Washington 
in August, 1916 


The President was very courteous to me, in his way. 
He invited me to luncheon the day after I arrived. Pres- 
ent: the President, Mrs. Wilson, Miss Bones, Tom Boll- 
ing, his brother-in-law, and I. The conversation was 
general and in the main jocular. Not a word about 
England, not a word about a foreign policy or foreign 
relations. 

He explained that the threatened railway strike en- 
gaged his whole mind. I asked to have a talk with him 
when his mind should be free. Would I not go off and 
rest and come back?—I preferred to do my minor errands 
with the Department, but I should hold myself at his 
convenience and at his command. | 

Two weeks passed. Another invitation to lunch. 
Sharp, the Ambassador to France, had arrived. He, too, 
was invited. Present: the President, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. 


172 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Wallace, the Misses Smith of New Orleans, Miss Bones, 
Sharp, and I. Not one word about foreign affairs. 

After luncheon, the whole party drove to the Capitol, 
where the President addressed Congress on the strike, 
proposing legislation to prevent it and to forestall similar 
strikes. It is a simple ceremony and somewhat impres- 
sive. ‘The Senators occupy the front seats in the House, 
the Speaker presides and the President of the Senate sits 
on his right. An escorting committee is sent out to 
bring the President in. He walks to the clerk’s or reader’s 
desk below the presiding officer’s, turns and shakes hands 
with them both and then proceeds to read his speech, very 
clearly and audibly. Some passages were applauded. 
When he had done, he again shook hands with the presid- 
ing officer and went out, preceded and followed by the 
White House escort. Isat in the Presidential (or diplomat- 
ic?) gallery with the White House party, higgledy-piggledy. 

The speech ended, the President drove to the White 
House with his escort in his car. The crowds in the cor- 
ridors and about the doors waited and crowded to see Mrs. 
Wilson, quite respectful but without order or discipline. 
We had to push our way through them. Now and thena 
policeman at a distance would yell loudly, “Make way 
there!” 

When we reached the White House, I asked the door- 
man if the President had arrived. 

eS. 

“Does he expect me to go in and say good-bye?”’ 

“No.” ? 

Thus he had no idea of talking with me now, if ever. 
Not at lunch nor after did he suggest a conversation about 
American-British affairs or say anything about my seeing 
him again. 

This threatened strike does hold his whole mind— 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 173 


bothers him greatly. It seems doubtful if he can avert a 
general strike. The Republicans are trying “to put him in 
a political hole,” and they say he, too, is playing politics. 
Whoever be to blame for it, it is true that politics is in the 
game. Nobody seems to foresee who will make capital 
out of it. Surely I can’t. 

There’s no social sense at the White House. The 
President has at his table family connections only—and 
they say few or no distinguished men and women are in- 
vited, except the regular notables at the set dinners—the 
diplomatic, the judiciary, and the like. His table is his 
private family affair—nothing more. It is very hard to 
understand why so intellectual a man doesn’t have notable 
men about him. It’s the college professor’s village habit, 
Idare say. But it’s a great misfortune. This is one way 
in which Mr. Wilson shuts out the world and lives too 
much alone, feeding only on knowledge and subjects that 
he has already acquired and not getting new views or fresh 
suggestions from men and women. 

He sees almost nobody except members of Congress for 
whom he sends for special conferences, and he usually sees 
these in his office. The railroad presidents and men he 
met in formal conference—no social touch. 

A member of his Cabinet told me that Mr. Wilson had 
shown confidence in him, given him a wide range of ac- 
tion in his own Department and that he relies on his judg- 
ment. This Cabinet member of course attends the 
routine state dinners and receptions, as a matter of re- 
quired duty. But as for any social recognition of his 
existence—he had never received a hint or nod. Nor 
does any member of the Cabinet (except, no doubt, Mr. 
McAdoo, his son-in-law). There is no social sense nor 
reason in this. In fact, it works to a very decided disad- 
vantage to the President and.-to the Nation. 


174 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


By the way, that a notable man in our educational 
life could form such a habit does not speak well for our 
educational life. 

What an unspeakably lamentable loss of opportunity! 
This is the more remarkable and lamentable because the 
President is a charming personality, an uncommonly 
good talker, a man who could easily make personal friends 
of all the world. He does his own thinking, untouched 
by other men’s ideas. He receives nothing from the out- 
side. His domestic life is spent with his own, nobody 
else, except House occasionally. His contact with his 
own Cabinet is a business man’s contact with his business 
associates and kind—at his office. 

He declined to see Cameron Forbes' on his return from 
the Philippines. 

The sadness of this mistake! | 

Another result is—the President doesn’t hear the 
frank truth about the men about him. He gives nobody 
a chance to tell him. Hence he has several heavy en- 
cumbrances in his official family. 

The influence of this lone-hand way of playing the game 
extends very far. The members of the Cabinet do not 
seem to have the habit of frankness with one another. 
Each lives and works in a water-tight compartment. I 
sat at luncheon (at a hotel) with Lansing, Secretary of 
State; Lane, Secretary of the Interior; Gregory, Attorney- 
General; Baker, Secretary of War; Daniels, Secretary of 
the Navy; and Sharp, Ambassador to France; and all the 
talk was jocular or semi-jocular, and personal—mere 
cheap chaff. Not a question was asked either of the Am- 
bassador to France or of the Ambassador to Great Brit- 
ain about the war or about our foreign relations. The 





1Mr. Forbes had been Governor-General of the Philippines from 1909 to 1913. 
His work had been extraordinarily successful. 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 Lees 


war wasn’t mentioned. Sharp and I might have come 
from Bungtown and Jonesville and not from France and 
England. We were not encouraged to talk—the local 
personal joke held the time and conversation. This as- 
tounding fact must be the result of this lone-hand, water- 
tight compartment method and—of the neutrality sup- 
pression of men. The Vice-President confessed to his 
neighbour at a Gridiron dinner that he had read none of 
the White Papers, or Orange Papers, etc., of the belligerent 
governments—confessed this with pride—lest he should 
form an opinion and cease to be neutral! Miss X, a 
member of the President’s household, said to Mrs. Y, the 
day we lunched there, that she had made a remark pri- 
vately to Sharp showing her admiration of the French. 

“Was that a violation of neutrality)” she asked in all 
seriousness. 

I can see it in no other way but this: the President sup- 
pressed free thought and free speech when he insisted upon 
personal neutrality. He held back the deliberate and 
spontaneous thought and speech of the people except the 
pro-Germans, who saw their chance and improved it! 
The mass of the American people found themselves for- 
bidden to think or talk, and this forbidding had a sufficient 
effect to make them take refuge in indifference. It’s the 
President’s job. He’s our leader. He'll attend to this 
matter. We must not embarrass him. On this easy 
cushion of non-responsibility the great masses fell back 
at their intellectual and moral ease—softened, isolated, 
lulled. 

That wasn’t leadership in a democracy. Right here is 
the President’s vast failure. From it there is now no es- 
cape unless the Germans commit more submarine crimes. 
They have kept the United States for their own exploiting 
after the war. They have thus had a real triumph of us. 


176 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


I have talked in Washington with few men who showed 
any clear conception of the difference between the Ger- 
mans and the British. To the minds of these people and 
high Government officials, German and English are alike 
foreign nations who are now foolishly engaged in war. 
Two of the men who look upon the thing differently are 
Houston! and Logan Waller Page.* In fact, there is no 
realization of the war in Washington. Secretary Houston 
has a proper perspective of the situation. He would have 
done precisely what I recommended—paved the way for 
claims and let the English take their course. “ Inter- 
national law”’ is no strict code and it’s all shot to pieces 
anyhow. 

The Secretary [of State] betrayed not the slightest cu- 
riosity about. our relations with Great Britain. I saw 
him several times—(1) in his office; (2) at his house; 
(3) at the French Ambassador’s; (4) at Wallace’s; (5) at 
his office; (6) at Crozier’s*’—this during my first stay in 
Washington. The only remark he made was that I’d find 
a different atmosphere in Washington from the atmosphere 
in London. Truly. All the rest of his talk was about 
“cases.” Would I see Senator Owen)? Would I see Con- 
gressman Sherley? Would I take up this ‘‘case”’ and 
that? His mind ran on “cases.”’ 

Well, at Y’s, when I was almost in despair, I rammed 
down him a sort of general statement of the situation as 
I saw it; at least, | made a start. But soon he stopped 
me and ran off at a tangent on some historical statement I 
had made, showing that his mind was not at all on the real 
subject, the large subject. When I returned to Washing- 
ton, and he had read my interviews with Grey, Asquith, 
cee of Agriculture. 


“In charge of government road building, a distant relative of the Ambassador. 
“Major General William Crozier, U. S. A., Chief of Ordnance. 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 id 


and Bryce,! and my own statement, he still said noth- 
ing, but he ceased to talk of “cases.” At my final in- 
terview he said that he had had difficulty in preventing 
Congress from making the retaliatory resolution manda- 
tory. He had tried to keep it back till the very end of 
the session, etc. 

This does not quite correspond with what the President 
told me—that the State Department asked for this re- 
taliatory resolution. 

I made specific suggestions in my statement to the 
President and to Lansing. They have (yet) said nothing 
about them. I fancy they will not. I have found no- 
where any policy—only ‘“‘cases.”’ 

I proposed to Baker and Daniels that they send a Gen- 
eral and an Admiral as attachés to London. They both 
agreed. Daniels later told me that Baker mentioned it 
to the President and he “stepped on the suggestion with 
both feet.” I did not bring it up. In the Franco- 
Prussian War of 1870, both General McClellan (or Sheri- 
dan)?) and General Forsythe were sent to the German 
Army. Our military ideas have shrunk since then! 

I find at this date (a month before the Presidential 
election), the greatest tangle and uncertainty of political 
opinion that I have ever observed in our country. ‘The 
President, in spite of his unparalleled leadership and 
authority in domestic policy, is by no means certain of 
election. He has the open hostility of the Germans—all 
very well, if he had got the fruits of a real hostility to 
them; but they have, in many ways, directed his foreign 
policy. He has lost the silent confidence of many men 
upon whose conscience this great question weighs heavily. 
If he be defeated he will owe his defeat to the loss of con- 


1See Chapter XIX, pages 160-164. 
*It was General Sheridan. 


178 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE! 


fidence in his leadership on this great subject. His 
opponent has put forth no clear-cut opinion. He playsa 
silent game on the German “‘issue.’’ Yet he will com- 
mand the support of many patriotic men merely as a lack 
of confidence in the President. 

Nor do I see any end of the results of this fundamental 
error. In the economic and political readjustment of the 
world we shall be “out of the game,” in any event—un- 
less we are yet forced into the war by Hughes’s election 
or by the renewal of the indiscriminate use of submarines 
by the Germans. . 

There is a great lesson in this lamentable failure of the 
President really to lead the Nation. The United States 
stands for democracy and free opinion as it stands for 
nothing else and as no other nation stands for it. Now 
when democracy and free opinion are at stake as they have 
not before been, we take a “‘neutral’’ stand—we throw 
away our very birthright. We may talk of “humanity” 
all we like: we have missed the largest chance that ever 
came to help the large cause that brought us into being as 
a Nation. Ey) 

And the people, sitting on the comfortable seats of 
neutrality upon which the President has pushed them 
back, are grateful for Peace, not having taken the trou- 
ble to think out what Peace has cost us and cost the world 
—except somany as have felt the uncomfortable stirrings 
of the national conscience. 

There is not a man in our State Department or in our 
Government who has ever met any prominent statesmen 
in any European Government—except the third Assistant 
Secretary of State, who has no authority in forming policies; 
there is not a man who knows the atmosphere of Europe. 
Yet when I proposed that one of the under Secretaries 
should go to England on a visit of a few weeks for obser- 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 179 


vation, the objection arose that such a visit would not be 
“neutral.” 


III 


The extraordinary feature of this experience was that 
Page had been officially summoned home, presumably to 
discuss the European situation, and that neither the Presi- 
dent nor the State Department apparently had the slight- 
est interest in his visit. 

“The President,’ Page wrote to Mr. Laughlin, “ domi- 
nates the whole show in a most extraordinary way. ‘The 
men about him (and he sees them only on ‘business’) are 
very nearly all very, very small fry, or worse—the nar- 
rowest twopenny lot I’ve ever come across. He has 
no real companions. Nobody talks to him freely and 
frankly. I’ve never known quite such a condition in 
American life.”” Perhaps the President had no desire to 
discuss inconvenient matters with his Ambassador to Great 
Britain, but Page was certainly determined to have an 
interview with the President. ‘I’m not going back to 
London,” he wrote Mr. Laughlin, ‘‘till the President has 
said something to me or at least till I have said something 
to him. I am now going down to Garden City and New 
York till the President send for me; or, if he do not send 
for me, I’m going to his house and sit on his front steps till 
he come out!” Page had brought from England one of 
the medals which the Germans had struck in honour of the 
Lusitania sinking, and one reason why he particularly 
wished to see the President alone was to show him this 
memento. 

Another reason was that in early September Page had re- 
ceived important news from London concerning the move 
which Germany was making for peace and the attitude 
of Great Britain in this matter. The several plans which 


180 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Germany had had under consideration had now taken the 
form of a definite determination to ask for an armistice 
before winter setin. A letter from Mr. Laughlin, Chargé 
d’affaires in Page’s absence, tells the story. 


From Irwin Laughlin 


Embassy of the United States of America. 
London, August 30, 1916. 
DEAR Mr. Paces: 

For some little time past I have heard persistent ru- 
mours, which indeed are more than rumours, since they 
have come from important sources, of an approaching 
movement by Germany toward an early armistice. They 
have been so circumstantial and so closely connected—in 
prospect—with the President, that I have examined them 
with particular attention and I shall try to give you the 
results, and my conclusions, with the recommendation 
that you take the matter up directly with the President 
and the Secretary of State. I have been a little at a loss 
to decide how to communicate what I have learned to the 
Government in Washington, for the present conditions 
make it impossible to set down what I want to say in an 
official despatch, but the fortunate accident of your being 
in the United States gives me the safe opportunity I want, 
and so I send my information to you, and by the pouch, 
as time is of less importance than secrecy. 

There seems to be no doubt that Germany is casting 
about for an opportunity to effect an armistice, if possible 
before the winter closesin. She hopes it may result in 
peace—a peace more or less favourable to her, of course— 
but even if such a result should fail of accomplishment she 
would have gained a breathing space; have secured an op- 
portunity to improve her strategic position in a military 
sense, perhaps by shortening her line in Flanders; have 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 181 


stiffened the resistance of her people; and probably have 
influenced a certain body of neutral opinion not only in 
her favour but against her antagonists. 

I shall not try to mention the various sources from 
which the threads that compose this fabric have been 
drawn, but I finally fastened on X of the Admiralty as a 
man with whom I could talk profitably and confidentially, 
and he told me positively that his information showed 
that Germany was looking in the direction I have indi- 
cated, and that she would soon approach the President on 
the subject—even if she had not already taken the first 
steps toward preparing her advance to him. 

I asked X if he thought it well for me to broach the 
subject to Lord Grey and he suggested that I first consult 
Y, which I did. The latter seemed very wary at the out- 
set, but he warmed up at last and in the course of the con- 
versation told me he had reliable information that when 
Bethmann-Hollweg went to Munich just before the be- 
ginning of the allied offensive in the west in June he told 
the King of Bavaria that he was confident the Allies would 
be obliged to begin overtures for peace next October; add- 
ing that if they didn’t Germany would have to do so. 
The King, it appears, asked him how Germany could 
approach the Allies if it proved to be advisable and he re- 
plied: “Through our good friend Wilson.” 

I asked Y if the King of Spain’s good offices would not 
be enlisted jointly with those of the President in attempt- 
ing to arrange an armistice, but he thought not, and said 
that the King of Spain was very well aware that the Allies 
would not consider anything short of definite peace pro- 
posals from Germany and that His Majesty knew the 
moment for them had not arrived. I then finally asked 
him point blank if he thought the Germans would ap- 
proach the President for an armistice, and, if so, when. 


182 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


He said he was inclined to think they might do so perhaps 
about October. On my asking him if he was disposed to 
let me communicate his opinion privately to the Govern- 
ment in Washington he replied after some hesitation that 
he had no objection, but he quickly added that I must 
make it clear at the same time that the British Govern- 
ment would not listen to any such proposals. 

These conversations took place during the course of 
last week, and on Sunday—the 27th—I invited the Span- 
ish Ambassador to luncheon at Tangley when I was able 
to get him to confirm what Y had said of his Sovereign’s 
attitude and opinions. 

I may mention for what it is worth that on Hoover’s 
last trip to Germany he was told by Bullock, of the Phila- 
delphia Ledger, that Zimmermann of the Berlin Foreign 
Office had told him that the Germans had intended in 
June to take steps for an armistice which were prevented 
by the preparations for the allied offensive in the west. 

Y was very emphatic in what he said of the attitude of 
his government and the British people toward continuing 
the war to an absolutely conclusive end, and I was much 
impressed. He said among other things that the execu- 
tion of Captain Fryatt had had a markedly perceptible 
effect in hardening British public opinion against Germany 
and fixing the determination to fight to a relentless finish. 
This corresponds exactly with my own observations. 

[ leave this letter entirely in your hands. You will 
know what use to make of it. It is meant as an official 
communication in everything but the usual form from 
which I have departed for reasons I need not explain 
further. 

I look forward eagerly to your return, 

Very sincerely yours, 
Inwin LAUGHLIN. 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 183 


Page waited five weeks before he succeeded in obtaining 
his interview with Mr. Wilson. 


To the President 


The New Willard, Washington, D. C. 
Thursday, September 21, 1916. 
DEAR Mr. PRESIDENT: 

While I am waiting for a convenient time to come 
when you will see me for a conference and report, I send 
you notes on conversations with Lord Grey and Lord 
Bryce.' They are, in effect, though of course not in form, 
messages to you. 

The situation between our government and Great 
Britain seems to me most alarming; and (let me add) 
easily removable, if I can get the ear of anybody in author- 
ity. But I find here only an atmosphere of suspicion— 
unwarranted by facts and easily dissipated by straight and 
simple friendly methods. I am sure of this. 

I have, besides, a most important and confidential 
message for you from the British Government which 
they prefer should be orally delivered. 

And I have written out a statement of my own study of 
the situation and of certain proposals which, I think, if 
they commend themselves to you, will go far to remove 
this dangerous tension. I hope to go over them with you 
at your convenience. 

Yours faithfully, 
WALTER H. Pace. 


The situation was alarming for more reasons than the 
determination of Germany to force the peace issue. The 
State Department was especially irritated at this time 


1See Chapter XIX, pages 160 and 164. 


184 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


over the blockade. Among the “trade advisers”’’ there 
was a conviction, which all Page’s explanations had not 
destroyed, that Great Britain was using the blockade as 
a means of destroying American commerce and securing 
America’s customers for herself. Great Britain’s regu- 
lations on the blacklist and “bunker coal” had intensified 
this feeling. In both these latter questions Page regarded 
the British actions as tactless and unjust; he had had many 
sharp discussions at the Foreign Office concerning them, 
but had not made much headway in his efforts to obtain 
their abandonment. The purpose of the “blacklist” 
was to strike at neutral firms with German affiliations 
which were trading with Germany. ‘The Trading with the 
Enemy Act provided that such firms could not trade with 
Great Britain; that British vessels must refuse to accept 
their cargoes, and that any neutral ship which accepted 
such cargoes would be denied bunker coal at British ports. 
Under this law the Ministry of Blockade issued a “‘black- 
list” of more than 1,000 proscribed exporting houses in 
the United States. So great was the indignation against 
this boycott in the United States that Congress, in early 
September, had passed a retaliatory act; this gave the 
President the authority at any time to place an embargo 
upon the exports to the United States of countries which 
discriminated against American firms and also to deny 
clearance to ships which refused to accept American car- 
goes. ‘The two countries indeed seemed to be hastening 
toward a crisis. 

Page’s urgent letter to Mr. Wilson brought a telegram 
from Mr. Tumulty inviting the Ambassador to spend the 
next evening and night with the President at Shadow 
Lawn, the seaside house on the New Jersey coast in which 
Mr. Wilson was spending the summer. Mr. Wilson re- 
ceived his old friend with great courtesy and listened 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 185 


quietly and with apparent interest to all that he had to say. 
The written statement to which Page refers in his letter 
told the story of Anglo-American relations from the time 
of the Panama tolls repeal up to the time of Page’s visit 
to Shadow Lawn. Quotations have already been made 
from it in preceding chapters, and the ideas which it 
contains have abundantly appeared in letters already 
printed. The document was an eloquent plea for Ameri- 
can cooperation with the Allies—for the dismissal of 
Bernstorff, for the adoption of a manly attitude toward 
Germany, and for the vindication of a high type of Ameri- 
canism. 

Page showed the President the Lusitania medal, but 
that did not especially impress him. “The Presi- 
dent said to me,’ wrote Page in reference to this visit, 
“that when the war began he and all the men he met 
were in hearty sympathy with the Allies; but that now 
the sentiment toward England had greatly changed. 
He saw no one who was not vexed and irritated by the 
arbitrary English course. That is, I fear, true—that 
he sees no one but has a complaint. So does the Secre- 
tary of State, and the Trade Bureau and all the rest 
in Washington. But in Boston, in New York, and in 
the South and in Auburn, N. Y., I saw no one whose 
sympathy with the Allies had undergone any funda- 
mental change. I saw men who felt vexed at such an 
act as the blacklist, but that was merely vexation, not 
a fundamental change of feeling. Of course, there 
came to see me men who had ‘cases.’ Now these are 
the only kind of men, I fear, whom the Government at 
Washington sees—these and the members of Congress 
whom the Germans have scared or have ‘put up’ to 
scare the Government—who are ‘twisting the lion’s tail,’ 
in a word.” 


186 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


“The President said,’ wrote Page immediately after 
coming from Shadow Lawn, “‘Tell those gentlemen for 
me ’—and then followed a homily to the effect that a dam- 
age done to any American citizen is a damage to him, etc. 
He described the war as a result of many causes, some 
of long origin. He spoke of England’s having the earth 
and of Germany wanting it. Of course, he said, the 
German system is directly opposed to everything Ameri- 
can. But I do not gather that he thought that this 
carried any very great moral reprehensibility. 

“He said that he wouldn’t do anything with the re- 
taliatory act till after election lest it might seem that 
he was playing politics. But he hinted that if there were 
continued provocation afterward (in case he were elected) 
he would. He added that one of the worst provocations 
was the long English delay in answering our Notes. 
Was this delay due to fear or shame? He evidently 
felt that such a delay showed contempt. He spoke of 
the Bryan treaty.!. But on no question had the British 
‘locked horns’ with us—on no question had they come 
to a clear issue so that the matter might be referred to 
the Commission.”’ 

Page delivered his oral message about the German 
determination to obtain an armistice. This was to the 
effect that Great Britain would not grant it. Page inti- 
mated that Britain would be offended if the President 
proposed it. 

“Tf an armistice, no,’’ answered Mr. Wilson. ‘‘That’s 
a military matter and is none of my business. But if 
they propose an armistice looking toward peace—yes, 
I shall be glad.” 





‘The treaty between the United States and Great Britain, adopted through the 
urgency of Mr. Bryan, providing for the arbitration of disputes between the two 
countries. 


WASHINGTON IN THE SUMMER OF 1916 187 


The experience was an exceedingly trying one for both 
men. ‘The discussion showed how far apart were the 
President and his Ambassador on practically every issue 
conuected with the crisis. Naturally the President’s 
reference to the causes of the war—that there were many 
causes, some of them of long persistence, and that Great 
Britain’s domination of the “earth” was one of them— 
conflicted with the judgment of a man who attributed 
the origin of the struggle to German aggression. The 
President’s statement that American sympathy for 
the Allies had now changed to irritation, and the tolerant 
attitude toward Germany which Mr. Wilson displayed, 
affected Page with the profoundest discouragement. 
The President’s intimation that he would advance Ger- 
many’s request for an armistice, if it looked toward 
peace—this in reply to Page’s message that Great Britain 
would not receive such a proposal in a kindly spirit— 
seemed to lay the basis of further misunderstandings. 
The interview was a disheartening one for Page. Many 
people whom the Ambassador met in the course of this 
visit still retain memories of his fervour in what had now 
become with him a sacred cause. With many friends and 
officials he discussed the European situation almost like a 
man inspired. The present writer recalls two long conver- 
sations with Page at this time: the recollection of his bril- 
liant verbal portraiture, his description of the determina- 
tion of Englishmen, his admiration for the heroic sacrifice 
of Englishwomen, remain as about the most vivid memor- 
ies of a life-time. And now the Ambassador had brought 
this same eloquence to the President’s ear at Shadow 
Lawn. It was in this interview that Page had hoped to 
show Mr. Wilson the real merits of the situation, and per- 
suade him to adopt the course to which the national honour 
and safety pointed; he talked long and eloquently, paint- 


188 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


ing the whole European tragedy with that intensity and 
readiness of utterance and that moral conviction which 
had so moved all others with whom he had come into con- 
tact during this memorable visit to the United States; but 
Mr. Wilson was utterly cold, utterly unresponsive, inter- 
ested only in ending the war. The talk lasted for a whole 
morning; its nature may be assumed from the many letters 
already printed; but Page’s voice, when it attempted to fire 
the conscience of the President, proved as ineffective as 
his pen. However, there was nothing rasping or conten- 
tious about the interview. ‘The two men discussed every- 
thing with the utmost calmness and without the slight- 
est indications of ill-nature. Both men had in mind 
their long association, both inevitably recalled the hopes 
with which they had begun their official relationship 
three years before, at that time neither having the 
faintest intimation of the tremendous problems that were 
to draw them asunder. Mr. Wilson at this meeting 
did not impress his Ambassador as a perverse character, 
but as an extremely pathetic one. Page came away 
with no vexation or anger, but with a real feeling for a 
much suffering and a much perplexed statesman. The 
fact that the President’s life was so solitary, and that 
he seemed to be so completely out of touch with men and 
with the living thoughts of the world, appealed strongly 
to Page’s sympathies. “I think he is the loneliest man 
I have ever known,” Page remarked to his son Frank 
after coming away from this visit. 

Page felt this at the time, for, as he rose to say good-bye 
to the President, he put his hand upon his shoulder. 
At this Mr. Wilson’s eyes filled with tears and he gave 
Page an affectionate good-bye. The two men never met 
again. 


CG HVAC BER XX. 
“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY 


F ONE thing I am sure,” Page wrote to his wife 
from Washington, while waiting to see President 
Wilson. ‘We wish to come home March 4th at midnight 
and to go about our proper business. There’s nothing 
here that I would for the world be mixed up with. As 
soon as I can escape with dignity I shall make my bow and 
exit. . . . But I am not unhappy or hopeless for the 
long run. They'll find out the truth some day, paying, I 
fear, a heavy penalty fordelay. But the visit here has con- 
firmed me in our previous conclusions—that if we can carry 
the load until March 4th, midnight, we shall be grateful 
that we have pulled through.”’ 

Soon after President Wilson’s reélection, therefore, 
Page sent his resignation to Washington. The above 
quotation shows that he intended this to be more than a 
‘courtesy resignation,” a term traditionally applied to the 
kind of leave-takings which Ambassadors usually send 
on the formation of a new administration, or at the be- 
ginning of a new Presidential term, for the purpose of giv- 
ing the President the opportunity of reorganizing his offi- 
cial family. Page believed that his work in London had 
been finished, that he had done everything in his power 
to make Mr. Wilson see the situation in its true light and 
that he had not succeeded. He therefore wished to give 
up his post and come home. This explains the fact that 
his resignation did not consist of the half dozen perfunc- 
tory lines which most diplomatic officers find sufficient on 

189 


190 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


such an occasion, but took the form of a review of the 
reasons why the United States should align itself on the 
side of the Allies. 


To the President 


London, November 24, 1916. 
DeEarR Mr. PRESIDENT: 

We have all known for many years that the rich and 
populous and organized states in which the big cities are 
do not constitute the political United States. But, I 
confess, I hardly expected so soon to see this fact pro- 
claimed at the ballot-box. To me that’s the surprise of 
the election. And your popular majority as well as your 
clear majority in the Electoral College is a great personal 
triumph for you. And you have remade the ancient and 
demoralized Democratic party. Four years ago it con- 
sisted of a protest and of the wreck wrought by Mr. 
Bryan’s long captaincy. This rebirth, with a popular 
majority, is an historical achievement—of your own. 

You have relaid the foundation and reset the pillars of 
a party that may enjoy a long supremacy for domestic 
reasons. Now, if you will permit me to say so, from my 
somewhat distant view (four years make a long period of 
absence) the big party task is to build up a clearer and 
more positive foreign policy. We are in the world and 
we ve got to choose what active part we shall play in it—I 
fear rather quickly. I have the conviction, as you know, 
that this whole round globe now hangs as a ripe apple for 
our plucking, if we use the right ladder while the chance 
lasts. I do not mean that we want or could get the apple 
for ourselves, but that we can see to it that it is put to 
proper uses. What we have to do, in my judgment, is to 
go back to our political fathers for our clue. If my long- 
time memory be good, they were sure that their establish- 


“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” 191 


ment of a great free Republic would soon be imitated by 
European peoples—that democracies would take the place 
of autocracies in all so-called civilized countries; for that 
was the form that the fight took in their day against 
organized Privilege. But for one reason or another—in 
our life-time partly because we chose so completely to iso- 
late ourselves—the democratic idea took root in Europe 
with disappointing slowness. It is, for mstance, now 
perhaps for the first time, in a thoroughgoing way, within 
sight in this Kingdom. The dream of the American 
Fathers, therefore, is not yet come true. They fought 
against organized Privilege exerted from over the sea. In 
principle it is the same fight that we have made, in our 
domestic field, during recent decades. Now the same 
fight has come on a far larger scale than men ever dreamed 
of before. 

It isn’t, therefore, for merely doctrinal reasons that we 
are concerned for the spread of democracy nor merely 
because a democracy is the only scheme of organization yet 
wrought out that keeps the door of opportunity open and 
invites all men to their fullest development. But we are 
interested in it because under no other system can the 
world be made an even reasonably safe place to live in. 
For only autocracies wage aggressive wars. Aggressive 
autocracies, especially military autocracies, must be 
softened down by peace (and they have never been so 
softened) or destroyed by war. The All-Highest doctrine 
of Germany to-day is the same as the Taxation-without- 
Representation of George III—only more virulent, 
stronger, and farther-reaching. Only by its end can the 
German people recover and build up their character and 
take the permanent place in the world that they—thus 
changed—will be entitled to. They will either reduce 
Europe to the vassalage of a military autocracy, which 


192 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


may then overrun the whole world or drench it in blood, 
or they must through stages of Liberalism work their way 
toward some approach to a democracy; and there is no 
doubt which event is impending. The Liberal idea will 
win this struggle, and Europe will be out of danger of 
a general assault on free institutions till some other autoc- 
racy which has a military caste try the same Napoleonic 
game. The defeat of Germany, therefore, will make for the 
spread of the doctrine of our Fathers and our doctrine yet. 

An interesting book might be made of concrete evi- 
dences of the natural antipathy that the present German 
autocracy has for successful democracy and hence for us. 
A new instance has just come to me. My son, Arthur, 
who succeeded to most of my activities at home, has been 
over here for a month and he has just come from a visit to 
France. In Paris he had a long conversation with Del- 
cassé, who told him that the Kaiser himself once made a 
proposal to him to join in producing “‘the complete isola- 
tion”’ of the United States. What the Kaiser meant was 
that if the great Powers of Europe would hold off, he 
would put the Monroe Doctrine to the test and smash it. 

The great tide of the world will, by reason of the war, 
now flow toward democracy—at present, alas! a tide of 
blood. For a century democracies and Liberal govern- 
ments have kept themselves too much isolated, trusting 
prematurely and too simply to international law and 
treaties and Hague conventions. These things have 
never been respected, except as springes to catch wood- 
cock, where the Divine Right held sway. The outgrow- 
ing or the overthrow of the Divine Right is a condition 
precedent to the effectiveness of international law and 
treaties. 

It has seemed to me, looking at the subject only with 
reference to our country’s duty and safety, that somehow 


*“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” 193 


and at some early time our championship of democracy 
must lead us to redeclare our faith and to show that we 
believe in our historic creed. Then we may escape falling 
away from the Liberal forces of the Old World and escape 
the suspicion of indifference to the great scheme of gov- 
ernment which was set up by our fathers’ giving their 
blood for it. I see no other way for us to take the best 
and biggest opportunity that has ever come to prove true 
to our faith as well as to secure our own safety and the 
safety of the world. Only some sort of active and open 
identification with the Allies can put us in effective protest 
against the assassins of the Armenians and the assassins 
of Belgium, Poland, and Serbia, and in a friendly attitude 
to the German people themselves, as distinguished from 
their military rulers. This is the attitude surely that our 
fathers would have wished us to take—and would have 
expected us to take—and that our children will be proud 
of us for taking; for it is our proper historic attitude, 
whether looked at from the past or looked back at from the 
future. There can be no historic approval of neutrality 
for years, while the world is bleeding to death. 

The complete severance of relations, diplomatic at first 
and later possibly economic as well, with the Turks and 
the Germans, would probably not cost us a man in battle 
nor any considerable treasure; for the moral effect of with- 
drawing even our formal approval of their conduct—at 
least our passive acquiescence—would be—that the Ger- 
mans would see that practically all the Liberal world 
stands against their system, and the war would end be- 
fore we should need to or could put an army in the field. 
The Liberal Germans are themselves beginning to see 
that it is not they, but the German system, that is the 
object of attack because it is the dangerous thing in the 
world. Maximilian Harden presents this view in his 


194. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Berlin paper. He says in effect that Germany must get 
rid of its predatory feudalism. That was all that was 
the matter with George IIT. 

Among the practical results of such action by us would, 
I believe, be the following: 

1. The early ending of the war and the saving of, per- 
haps, millions of lives and of incalculable treasure; 

2. The establishment in Germany of some form of 
more liberal government; 

3. A league to enforce peace, ready-made, under our 
guidance—1i.e., the Allies and ourselves; 

4. The sympathetic cooperation and the moral force of 
every Allied Government in dealing with Mexico: 

5. The acceptance—and even documentary approval— 
of every Allied Government of the Monroe Doctrine; 

6. The warding off and no doubt the final prevention 
of danger from Japan, and, most of all, the impressive 
and memorable spectacle of our Great Democracy thus 
putting an end to this colossal crime, merely from the 
impulse and necessity to keep our own ideals and to lead 
the world right on. We should do for Europe on a large 
scale essentially what we did for Cuba on a small scale and 
thereby usher in a new era in human history. 

I write thus freely, Mr. President, because at no time 
can I write in any other way and because I am sure that all 
these things can quickly be brought to pass under your 
strong leadership. ‘The United States would stand, as 
no other nation has ever stood in the world—predominant 
and unselfish—on the highest ideals ever reached in 
human government. It is a vision as splendid as the 
Holy Grael. Nor have I a shadow of doubt of the eager 
and faithful following of our people, who would thereby 
reestablish once for all our weakened nationality. We 
are made of the stuff that our Fathers were made of. 


*“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY ”’ 195 


And I write this now for the additional reason that I 
am within sight of the early end of my service here. When 
you called me I answered, not only because you did me 
great honour and laid a definite patriotic duty on me, but 
because also of my personal loyalty to you and my pride 
in helping forward the great principles in which we both 
believe. But I understood then (and I am sure the sub- 
ject lay in your mind in the same way) that my service 
would be for four years at the most. I made all my ar- 
rangements, professional and domestic, on this supposi- 
tion. I shall, therefore, be ready to lay down my work 
here on March 4th or as soon thereafter as meets your 
pleasure. 

I am more than proud of the confidence that you have 
shown in me. To it I am indebted for the opportunity 
I have had to give such public service to my country as 
I could, as well as for the most profitable experience of 
my life. A proper and sympathetic understanding be- 
tween the two English-speaking worlds seems to me the 
most important duty of far-seeing men in either country. 
It has taken such a profound hold on me that I shall, in 
whatever way I can, work for its complete realization as 
long as I can work for anything. 

I am, Mr. President, most faithfully and gratefully 
yours, 

WaLTer H. Pace. 


This letter was written at a time when President Wilson 
was exerting his best energies to bring about peace. The 
Presidential campaign had caused him to postpone these 
efforts, for he believed that neither Germany nor Great 
Britain could take seriously the activities of a President 
whose own political position was insecure. At the time 
Page’s letter was received, the President was thinking only 


196 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


of a peace based upon a stalemate; it was then his appar- 
ent conviction that both sides to the struggle were about 
equally in the wrong and that a decisive victory of either 
would not be a good thing for the world. Yet it is in- 
teresting to compare this letter with the famous speech 
which the President made six months afterward when 
he asked Congress to declare the existence of a state of 
war with Germany. Practically all the important reasons 
which Mr. Wilson then advanced for this declaration are 
found in Page’s letter of the preceding November. That 
autocracies are a constant menace to world peace, that 
the United States owes it to its democratic tradition to 
take up arms against the enemy of free government, that 
in doing this, it was not making war upon the German 
people, but upon its imperialistic masters—these were the 
arguments which Page laid before the President in his let- 
ter of resignation, and these were the leading ideas in Mr. 
Wilson’s address of April 2nd. ‘There are even sentences 
in Page’s communication which seem to foreshadow Mr. 
Wilson’s assertion that “The world must be made safe 
for democracy.” This letter in itself sufficiently makes it 
clear that Page’s correspondence, irritating in its later 
phases as it may have been, strongly influenced Mr. Wilson 
in his final determination on war. 

On one point, indeed, Colonel House afterward called 
the Ambassador to account. When America was pre- 
paring to raise armies by the millions and to spend its 
treasure by the billions, he reminded Page of his statement 
that the severance of diplomatic relations “would prob- 
ably not cost us a man in battle nor any considerable 
treasure.’ Page’s statement in this November letter 
merely reiterated a conviction which for more than a year 
he had been forcing upon the President and Colonel 
House—that the dismissal of Bernstorff would not neces- 


“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” — 197 


sarily imply war with Germany, but that it would in itself 
be enough to bring the war to anend. On this point Page 
never changed his mind, as is evident from the letter which 
he wrote to Colonel House when this matter was called to 
his attention: 


To Edward M. House 


London, June 29, 1917. 
My DEAR House: 

I never put any particular value on my own prophecies 
nor on anybody else’s. I have therefore no pride as a 
prophet. Yet I do think that I hit it off accurately a 
year or a year and a half ago when I said that we could 
then have ended the war without any appreciable cost. 
And these are my reasons: 

If we had then come in and absolutely prevented sup- 
plies from reaching Germany, as we are now about to do, 
the war would then have been much sooner ended than it 
can now be ended: 

(1) Our supplies enabled her to go on. 

(2) She got time in this way to build her great sub- 
marine fleet. She went at it the day she promised the 
President to reform. 

(3) She got time and strength to overrun Rumania 
whence she got food and oil; and continues to get it. 

(4) During this time Russia fell down as a military 
force and gave her more time, more armies for France 
and more supplies. Russian guns have been sold to the 
Germans. 

If a year and ahalf ago we had starved her out, it 
would have been over before any of these things hap- 
pened. This delay is what will cost us billions and 
billions and men and men. 

And it cost us one thing more. During the neutrality 


198 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


period we were as eager to get goods to the little neutral 
states which were in large measure undoubtedly bound to 
Germany as we are now eager to keep them out. Grey, 
who was and is our best friend, and who was unwilling 
to quarrel with us more than he was obliged to, was thrown 
out of office and his career ended because the blockade, 
owing to his consideration for us, was not tight enough. 
Our delay caused his fall. 

But most of all, it gave the Germans time (and to some 
extent material) to build their present fleet of submarines, 
They were at work on them all the while and according to 
the best opinion here they continue to build them faster 
than the British destroy them; and the submarines are 
destroying more merchant ships than all the shipbuild- 
ing docks of all the world are now turning out. This is 
the most serious aspect of the war—by far the most 
serious. I am trying to get our Government to send 
over hundreds of improvised destroyers—armed tugs, 
yachts, etc., etc. Admiral Sims and the British Admiralty 
have fears that unless such help come the full fruits of the 
war may never be gathered by the Allies—that some sort 
of a compromise peace may have to be made. 

It is, therefore, true that the year and a half we waited 
after the Lusitania will prove to be the most costly year 
and a half in our history; and for once at least my old 
prophecy was quite a good guess. But that water has 
flowed over the dam and it is worth mentioning now only 
because you challenged me. . 


That part of Page’s letter which refers to his retirement 
had a curious history. It was practically a resigna- 
tion and therefore called for an immediate reply, but Mr. 
Wilson did not even acknowledge its receipt. For two 
months the Ambassador was left in the dark as to the atti- 


““PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” 199 


tude of Washington. Finally, in the latter part of Janu- 
ary, 1917, Page wrote urgently to Mr. Lansing, asking 
him to bring the matter to the President’s attention. On 
February 5, 1917, Mr. Lansing’s reply was received. 
“The President,” he said, “under extreme pressure of the 
present situation, has been unable to consider your com- 
munication in regard to your resignation. He desires me 
to inform you that he hopes that, at the present time, you 
will not press to be relieved from service; that he realizes 
that he is asking you to make a personal sacrifice, but he 
believes that you will appreciate the importance, in the 
crisis which has developed, that no change should be made. 
I hardly need to add my personal hope that you will put 
aside any thought of resigning your post for the present.” 

At this time, of course, any idea of retiring was out of 
the question. The President had dismissed Bernstorff 
and there was every likelihood that the country would 
soon be at war. Page would have regarded his retire- 
ment at this crisis as little less than the desertion of his 
post. Moreover, since Mr. Wilson had adopted the policy 
which the Ambassador had been urging for nearly two 
years, and had sent Bernstorff home, any logical excuse 
that may have existed for his resignation existed no longer. 
Mr. Wilson had now adopted a course which Page could 
enthusiastically support. 

‘“T am happy to serve here at any sacrifice’’—such was 
his reply to Mr. Lansing—‘until after the end of the war, 
and 1 am making my arrangements to stay for this 
period.” 

The months that intervened between the Presidential 
election and the declaration of war were especially difficult 
for the American Embassy in London. Page had in- 
formed the President, in the course of his interview of 
September 22nd, how unfavourably Great Britain re- 


900 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


garded his efforts in the direction of peace; he had in 
fact delivered a message from the Foreign Office that 
any Presidential attempt to “mediate’’ would be rejected 
by the Allies. Yet his earnest representation on this 
point had produced no effect upon Mr. Wilson. The 
pressure which Germany was bringing to bear upon Wash- 
ington was apparently irresistible. Count Bernstorft’s 
memoirs, with their accompanying documents, have re- 
vealed the intensity of the German efforts during this 
period; the most startling fact revealed by the German 
Ambassador is that the Kaiser, on October 9th, notified 
the President, almost in so many words, that, unless he 
promptly moved in the direction of peace, the German 
Government “would be forced to regain the freedom of 
action which it has reserved to itself in the note of May 
Ath last." It is unlikely that the annals of diplomacy 
contain many documents so cool and insolent as this one. 
It was a notification from the Kaiser to the President that 
the so-called “Sussex pledge’? was not regarded as an 
unconditional one by the Imperial Government; that it 
was given merely to furnish Mr. Wilson an opportunity to 
bring the war to an end; and that unless the Presidential 
attempt to accomplish this were successful, there would be 
a resumption of the indiscriminate submarine campaign. 
The curious developments of the next two months are 
now afamiliar story. Possibly because the British Govern- 
ment had notified him, through Page, that his proffer of 
mediation would be unacceptable, Mr. Wilson moved 
cautiously and slowly, and Germany became impatient. 
The successful campaign against Rumania, resulting in the 
capture of Bucharest on December 6th, and the new vista 
which it opened to Germany of large food supplies, 
strengthened the Teutonic purpose. Perhaps Germany, 
“My Three Years in America,’ by Count Bernstorff, p. 294. 


“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” 201 


with her characteristic lack of finesse, imagined that her 
own open efforts would lend emphasis to Mr. Wilson’s 
pacific exertions. At any rate, on December 12th, just as 
Mr. Wilson was preparing to launch his own campaign for 
mediation, Germany herself approached her enemies with a 
proposal for a peace conference. A few days afterward 
Page, as the representative of Germany, called at the For- 
eign Office to deliver the large white envelope which con- 
tained the Kaiser’s “ peace proposal.’ In delivering this to 
Lord Robert Cecil, who was acting as Foreign Secretary 
in the temporary absence of Mr. Balfour, Page emphasized 
the fact that the American Government entirely disasso- 
ciated itself from its contents and that he was acting 
merely in his capacity of “German Ambassador.’ Two 
communications from Lord Robert to Sir Cecil Spring 
Rice, British Ambassador at Washington, tell the story 
and also reveal that it was almost impossible for Page, 
even when engaged in an Official proceeding, to conceal 
his contempt for the whole enterprise: 


Lord R. Cecil to Sir C. Spring Rice 


Foreign Office, 
December 18, 1916. 
SIR: 

The American Ambassador came to see me this morning 
and presented to me the German note containing what is 
called in it the “offer of peace.”” He explained that he 
did so on instructions of his Government as representing 
the German Government, and not in any way as repre- 
senting their own opinions. He also explained that the 
note must be regarded as coming from the four Central 
Powers, and as being addressed to all the Entente Powers 
who were represented by the United States. 

He then read to me a telegram from his Government, 


902 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


but declined to leave me a copy of it. The first part of 
the telegram explained that the Government of the United 
States would deeply appreciate a confidential intimation 
of the response to be made to the German note and that 
they would themselves have certain representations to 
make to the Entente Powers, to which they urgently 
begged the closest consideration. ‘The telegram went on 
to explain that the Government of the United States had 
had it in mind for some time past to make such represen- 
tations on behalf of neutral nations and humanity, and 
that it must not be thought that they were prompted by 
the Governments of the Central Powers. They wished 
us to understand that the note of the Central Powers 
created a good opportunity for making the American 
representations, but was not the cause of such represen- 
tations being made. 

I replied that [ could of course say nothing to him on 
such an important matter without consulting my col- 
leagues. 

I am, etc., 
Rosert CECIL. 


Lord R. Cecil to Sir C. Spring Rice 


Foreign Office, 
x 19 December, 1916. 
SIR: 

The American Ambassador came to see me this after- 
noon. 

I asked him whether he could tell me why his govern- 
ment were anxious to have confidential information as to 
the nature of our response to the German peace note. 

He replied that he did not know, but he imagined it 
was to enable them to frame the representations of which 
he had spoken to me. 


*“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” 203 


I then told him that we had asked the French to draft 
a reply, and that it would then be considered by the Allies, 
and in all probability an identic note would be presented 
in answer to the German note. I thought it probable that 
we should express our view that it was impossible to deal 
with the German offer, since it contained no specific pro- 
posals. 

He said that he quite understood this, and that we 
should in fact reply that it was an offer “to buy a pig ina 
poke” which we were not prepared to accept. He added 
that he thought his Government would fully anticipate a 
reply in this sense, and he himself obviously approved it. 

Then, speaking quite seriously, he said that he had 
heard people in London treating the German offer with 
derision, but that no doubt the belligerent governments 
would treat it seriously. 

I said that it was certainly a serious thing, and no doubt 
would be treated seriously. 

I asked him if he knew what would be contained in the 
proposed representations from his government. 

He said that he did not; but as he understood that they 
were to be made to all the belligerents, he did not think 
that they could be much more than a pious aspiration for 
peace; since that was the only thing that was equally 
applicable to the Germans and to us. 

As he was leaving he suggested that the German note 
might be published in our press. 

I am, etc., 
Rosert CECIL. 


This so-called German “peace proposal” began with 
the statement that the war “had been forced”’ upon Ger- 
many, contained the usual reference to the military might 
of the Central Powers, and declared that the Fatherland 


904. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


was fighting for “the honour and liberty of national 
evolution.” It is therefore not surprising that Lord 
Robert received it somewhat sardonically, especially as the 
communication contained no specific proposals, but 
merely a vague suggestion of “negotiations.” But an- 
other spectacular performance now drove the German 
manceuvre out of everybody’s mind. That President 
Wilson resented this German interference with his own 
plans is well known; he did not drop them, however, but 
on December 18th, he sent his long-contemplated peace 
communication to all the warring Powers. His appeal 
took the form of asking that they state the objects for 
which they were fighting, the Presidential belief evidently 
being that, if they did this, a common meeting ground 
might possibly be found. The suggestion that the Allied 
war aims were not public property, despite the fact 
that British statesmen had been broadly proclaiming 
them for three years, caused a momentary irritation 
in England, but this was not a serious matter, especially 
as the British Cabinet quickly saw that this request 
gave them a position of advantage over Germany, 
which had always refused to make public the terms on 
which it would end the war. The main substance in this 
Presidential approach, therefore, would have produced 
no ill-feeling; as usual, it was a few parenthetical phrases— 
phrases which were not essential to the main argument— 
which set the allied countries seething with indignation. 
The President, this section of his note ran, “‘takes the 
liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects 
which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have 
in mind in this war, are virtually the same, as stated in 
general terms to their own people and to the world. Each 
side desires to make the rights and privileges of weak 
peoples and small states as secure against aggression and 


‘“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” 205 


denial in the future as the rights and privileges of the 
great and powerful states now at war.” This idea was 
elaborated in several sentences of a similar strain, the 
general purport of the whole passage being that there was 
little to choose between the combatants, inasmuch as both 
were apparently fighting for about the same things. Mr. 
Wilson’s purpose in this paragraph is not obscure; he was 
making his long expected appearance as a mediator, and 
he evidently believed that it was essential to this rdle that 
he should not seem to be prejudiced in favour of either 
side, but should hold the balance impartially between 
them. 

It is true that a minute reading indicates that Mr. 
Wilson was merely quoting, or attempting to paraphrase, 
the statements of the leaders of both sides, but there is such 
a thing as quoting with approval, and no explanation 
could convince the British public that the ruler of the 
greatest neutral nation had not declared that the Allies 
and the Central Powers stood morally upon the same level. 
The popular indignation which this caused in Great 
Britain was so intense that it alarmed the British authori- 
ties. The publication of this note in the British press was 
withheld for several hours, in order to give the Govern- 
ment an opportunity to control the expression of editorial 
opinion; otherwise it was feared that this would be so un- 
restrained in its bitterness that relations with the United 
States might be imperilled. The messages which the Lon- 
don correspondents were permitted to send to the United 
States were carefully censored for the same reason. The 
dispatch sent by the Associated Press was the product of 
a long struggle between the Foreign Office and its London 
correspondent. The representatives spent half an hour 
considering whether the American correspondents could 
cable their country that the note had been received in 


906 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


England with “surprise and irritation.” After much 
discussion it was decided that “irritation”’ could not be 
used, and the message of the Associated Press, after under- 
going this careful editing by the Foreign Office, was a 
weak and ridiculous description of the high state of ex- 
citement which prevailed in Great Britain. The fact that 
the British Foreign Office should have given all this trou- 
ble over the expressions sent to American newspapers and 
should even have spent half an hour debating whether a 
particular word should be used, almost pathetically illus. 
trates the great care taken by the British Government not 
to influence American opinion against the Allies. 

The Government took the same precautions with its 
own press in England. When the note was finally 
released the Foreign Office explicitly directed the Lon- 
don newspapers to comment with the utmost caution 
and in no case to question the President’s sincerity. 
Most of them acquiesced in these instructions by main- 
taining silence. There was only one London newspaper, 
the Westminster Gazette, which made even a faint-hearted 
attempt to explain away the President’s statement. 
From the first day of the war the British people had 
declared that President Wilson did not understand the 
issues at stake; and they now declared that this note 
confirmed their worst forebodings. The comments of 
the man-in-the-street were unprintable, but more serious 
than these was the impression which Mr. Wilson’s du- 
bious remarks made upon those Englishmen who had 
always been especially friendly to the United States and 
who had even defended the President in previous crises. 
Lord Bryce, who had accepted philosophically the Presi- 
dential statement that the United States was not “con. 
cerned with the causes” of the war, could not regard 
so indulgently this latest judgment of Great Britain 


**PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY”’ 207 


and Germany. “Bryce came to see me in a state of 
great depression,’ wrote Page. ‘‘He has sent Mr. Wilson 
a personal letter on this matter.” Northcliffe com- 
manded his newspapers, the Times and the Daily Mail, 
to discuss the note in a judicial spirit, but he himself 
told Mr. Page that “everybody is as angry as hell.” 
When someone attempted to discuss the Wilson note 
with Mr. Asquith, he brushed the subject away with a 
despairing gesture. “Don’t talk to me about it,’ he 
said. “It is most disheartening.’ But the one man in 
England who was perhaps the most affected was King 
George. A man who had attended luncheon at Buck- 
ingham Palace on December 21st gave Page a descrip- 
tion of the royal distress. The King, expressing his 
surprise and dismay that Mr. Wilson should think that 
Englishmen were fighting for the same things in this war 
as the Germans, broke down. 

The world only now understands the dreadful prospect 
which was opening before Europe at the moment when 
this Presidential note added a new cause for general 
despondency. Rumania had collapsed, the first inkling 
of the Russian revolution had been obtained, the 
British well knew that the submarine warfare was to 
be resumed, and British finances were also in a 
desperate plight. More and more it was becoming 
evident to the British statesmen that they needed the 
intervention of the United States. This is the reason 
why they could not destroy the chances of American 
help by taking official offense even at what Page, in a 
communication to the Secretary of State, did not hesitate 
to call President Wilson’s “insulting words”; and hence 
their determination to silence the press and to give no 
outward expression of what they felt. Page’s interview 
with Lord Robert Cecil on December 26th, while the 


908 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Presidential communication was lying on his desk, dis- 
closes the real emotions of Englishmen. Apparently 
Page’s frank cables concerning the reception of this para- 
graph had caused a certain interest in the State Depart- 
ment; at least the Ambassador was instructed to call at the 
Foreign Office and explain that the interpretation which 
had been commonly put upon the President’s words was 
not the one which he had intended. At the same time 
Page was instructed to request the British Foreign Office, 
in case its reply were “favourable,” not to publish it, 
but to communicate it secretly to the American Govern- 
ment. The purpose of this request is a little obscure; 
possibly it was the President’s plan to use such a favour- 
able reply to force Germany likewise to display an ac- 
quiescent mood. The object of Page’s call was to present 
this disclaimer. 

Lord Robert Cecil, the son of the late Lord Salisbury, 
—that same Lord Salisbury whose combats with Secre- 
tary Blaine and Secretary Olney form piquant chapters 
in British-American history—is one of the most able 
and respected of British statesmen. In his _ earlier 
life Lord Salisbury had been somewhat overbearing 
in his attitude toward the United States; in his later 
years, however, perhaps owing to the influence of his 
nephew, Mr. Balfour, his manner had changed. In his 
attitude toward the United States Lord Robert Cecil 
reflected only the later phases of his father’s career. 
To this country and to its peaceful ideals he had always 
been extremely sympathetic, and to Page especially he 
had never manifested anything but cordiality. Yet it 
was evident, as Page came into his office this morning, 
that to Lord Robert, as to every member of the Govern- 
ment, the President’s note, with its equivocal phrases, 
had been a terrible shock. His manner was extremely 


**PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY ”’ 209 


courteous, as always, but he made no attempt to conceal 
his feelings. Ordinarily Lord Robert did not wear his 
emotions on the surface; but he took occasion on this 
visit to tell Page how greatly the President’s communi- 
cation had grieved him. 

“The President,” he said, ““has seemed to pass judg- 
ment on the allied cause by putting it on the same level 
as the German. I am deeply hurt.” 

Page conveyed Mr. Lansing’s message that no such 
inference was justified. But this was not reassuring. 

‘‘Moreover,’’ Lord Robert added, “there is one sen- 
tence in the note—that in which the President says that 
the position of neutrals is becoming intolerable—that 
seems almost a veiled threat.”’ 

Page hastened to assure Lord Robert that no threat 
was intended. 

Lord Robert’s manner became increasingly serious. 

“There is nothing that the American Government or 
any other human power can do,” he remarked slowly and 
solemnly, “which will bring this war to a close before the 
Allies have spent their utmost force to secure a victory. 
A failure to secure such a victory will leave the world at 
the mercy of the most arrogant and the bloodiest tyranny 
that has ever been organized. It is far better to die in 
an effort to defeat that tyranny than to perish under its 
success.” 

On any occasion Lord Robert is an impressive or at 
least a striking and unusual figure; he is tall, lank, and 
ungainly, almost Lincolnesque in the carelessness of his 
apparel and the exceeding awkwardness of his postures and 
manners. His angular features, sharp nose, pale face, and 
dark hair suggest the strain of ascetism, almost of fanat- 
icism, which runs in the present generation of his family. 
And the deep sincerity and power of his words on this 


210 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


occasion made an impression which Page never forgot; 
they transformed the British statesman into an eloquent, 
almost an heroic figure. If we are to understand the full 
tragedy of this moment we must remember that, incredible 
as it now seems, there was a fear in British officialdom 
that the United States might not only not pursue a course 
favourable to the Allies, but that it might even throw its 
support to Germany. The fear, of course, was baseless; 
any suggestion of such a policy in the United States would 
have destroyed any official who had brought it forward; 
but Lord Robert knew and Page knew that there were 
insidious influences at work at that time, both in the 
United States and in Great Britain, which looked in this 
direction. A group of Americans, whom Page used to re- 
fer to as “peace spies,’ were associated with English 
pacifists, for the purpose of bringing about peace on al- 
most any terms. These “peace spies’ had worked out a 
programme all their own. The purpose was to compel 
Great Britain to accept the German terms for ending the 
war. Unless she did accept them, then it was intended 
that the American Government should place an embargo 
on the shipment of foodstuffs and munitions to the Allies. 
There is little question that the United States, by taking 
such action, could have ended the war almost instan- 
taneously. Should the food of her people and the great 
quantities of munitions which were coming from this 
country be suddenly cut off, there is little likelihood that 
Great Britain could have long survived. The possibility 
that an embargo might shut out these supplies had hung 
over the heads of British statesmen ever since the war be- 
gan; they knew that the possession of this mighty power 
made the United States the potential dictator of events; 
and the fear that it might be used had never ceased to 
influence their thoughts or their actions. Even while this 


“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” PAL 


interview was taking place, certain anti-British forces in 
the United States, such as Senator Hoke Smith of Georgia, 
were urging action of this kind. 

“T have always been almost a Pacifist,’’ Lord Robert 
continued. ‘No man has ever hated war worse than I. 
No man has ever had a more earnest faith that war can 
be abolished. But European civilization has been mur- 
derously assaulted and there is nothing now to do but to 
defeat this desperate enemy or to perish in the effort. I 
had hoped that the United States understood what is at 
stake.” 

Lord Robert went on: 

“T will go so far as to say that if the United States will 
come into the war it will decide which will win, freedom or 
organized tyranny. If the United States shall help the 
Germans, civilization will perish and it will be necessary 
to build it up slowly again—if indeed it will ever appear 
again. If the United States will help the Allies, civiliza- 
tion will triumph.” 

As to the proposal that the British terms should be 
conveyed confidentially to Mr. Wilson, Lord Robert said 
that that would be a difficult thing todo. The President’s 
note had been published, and it therefore seemed neces- 
sary that the reply should also be given to the press. This 
was the procedure that was ultimately adopted. 


Startling as was the sensation caused by the President’s 
December note, it was mild compared with that which was 
now to come. Page naturally sent prompt reports of all 
these conversations to the President and likewise kept 
him completely informed as to the state of public feeling, 
but his best exertions apparently did not immediately 
affect the Wilson policy. The overwhelming fact is that 


1This narrative is based upon memoranda made by Page. 


912 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


the President’s mind was fixed on a determination to com- 
pel the warring powers to make peace and in this way to 
keep the United States out of the conflict. Even the dis- 
turbance caused by his note of December 18th did not 
make him pause in this peace campaign. To that note 
the British sent a manly and definite reply, drafted by 
Mr. Balfour, giving in detail precisely the terms upon 
which the Allies would compose their differences with the 
Central Powers. ‘The Germans sent a reply consisting of 
ten or a dozen lines, which did not give their terms, but 
merely asked again for a conference. Events were now 
moving with the utmost rapidity. On January 9th, a 
council of German military chieftains was held at Pless; 
in this it was decided to resume unrestricted submarine 
warfare. On January 16th the Zimmermann-Mexico tele- 
eram was intercepted; this informed Bernstorff, among 
other things, that this decision had been made. On 
January 16th, at nine o'clock in the morning, the 
American Embassy in London began receiving a long 
cipher despatch from Washington. The preamble an- 
nounced that the despatch contained a copy of an address 
which the President proposed to deliver before the Senate 
“in a few days.”’ Page was directed to have copies of 
the address “‘secretly prepared”’ and to hand them to the 
British Foreign Office and to newspapers of the type of the 
Nation, the Daily News, and the Manchester Guardian— 
all three newspapers well known for their Pacifist tenden- 
cies. As the speech approached its end, this sentence ap- 
peared: “It must be a peace without victory.” The 
words greatly puzzled the secretary in charge, for they 
seemed almost meaningless. Suspecting that an error 
had been made in transmission, the secretary directed the 
code room to cable Washington for a verification of the 
cipher groups. Very soon the answer was received; there 


‘“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY” 213 


had been no mistake; the Presidential words were precisely 
those which had been first received: ‘Peace without vic- 
tory.” The slips were then taken to Page, who read the 
document, especially these fateful syllables, with a con- 
sternation which he made no effort to conceal. He im- 
mediately wrote a cable to President Wilson, telling him of 
the deplorable effect this sentence would produce and im- 
ploring him to cut it out of his speech—with what success 
the world now knows. 

An astonishing feature of this episode is that Page had 
recently explained to the Foreign Office, in obedience to 
instructions from Washington, that Mr. Wilson’s Decem- 
ber note should not be interpreted as placing the Allies and 
the Central Powers on the same moral level. Now Mr. 
Wilson, in this “peace without victory” phrase, had re- 
peated practically the same idea in another form. On 
the day the speech was received at the Embassy, about a 
week before it was delivered in the Senate, Page made 
the following memorandum: 


The President’s address to the Senate, which was re- 
ceived to-day (January 16th),’ shows that he thinks he 
can play peace-maker. He does not at all understand, 
(or, if he do, so much the worse for him) that the Entente 
Powers, especially Great Britain and France, cannot make 
“peace without victory.” If they do, they will become 
vassals of Germany. In a word, the President does not 
know the Germans; and he is, unconsciously, under their 
influence in his thought. His speech plays into their 
hands. 

This address will give great offense in England, since it 
puts each side in the war on the same moral level. 

I immediately saw the grave danger to our relations with 


1[t was delivered and published on January 22nd. 


214. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Great Britain by the Peace-without-Victory plan; and I 
telegraphed the President, venturing to advise him to omit 
that phrase—with no result. 


Afterward Page added this to the above: 


Compare this Senate speech with his speech in April 
calling for war: Just when and how did the President 
come to see the true nature of the German? What made 
him change from Peace-Maker to War-Maker? The 
Zimmermann telegram, or the February U-boat renewal 
of warfare? Had he been so credulous as to believe the 
German promise? This promise had been continuously 
and repeatedly broken. 

Or was it the pressure of public opinion, the growing 
impatience of the people that pushed him in? 

This distressing peace-move—utterly out of touch with 
the facts of the origin of the war or of its conduct or of the 
mood and necessities of Great Britain—a remote, aca- 
demic deliverance, while Great Britain and France were 
fighting for their very lives—made a profoundly dejected 
feeling; and it made my place and work more uncomfort- 
able than ever. “Peace without victory” brought us to 
the very depths of European disfavour. 


CHAPTER XXI 
THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 


I 


HE United States broke off diplomatic relations with 
Germany on February 3, 1917. The occasion was 
a memorable one in the American Embassy in London, 
not unrelieved by a touch of the ridiculous. All day 
long a nervous and rather weary company had waited in 
the Ambassador’s room for the decisive word from Wash- 
ington. Mr. and Mrs. Page, Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin, Mr. 
Shoecraft, the Ambassador’s secretary, sat there hour after 
hour, hardly speaking to one another in their tense excite- 
ment, waiting for the news that would inform them that 
Bernstorff’s course had been run and that their country 
had taken its decision on the side of the Allies. Finally, 
at nine o’clock in the evening, the front door bell rang. 
Mr. Shoecraft excitedly left the room; half way down- 
stairs he met Admiral William Reginald Hall, the head 
of the British Naval Intelligence, who was hurrying up to 
the Ambassador. Admiral Hall, as he spied Mr. Shoe- 
craft, stopped abruptly and uttered just two words: 

“Thank God!” 

He then went into the Ambassador’s room and read a 
secret code message which he had just received from Cap- 
tain Gaunt, the British naval attaché at Washington. 
It was as follows: 

‘Bernstorff has just been given his passports. I shall 
probably get drunk to-night!” 

pe 215 


216 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


It was in this way that Page first learned that the long 
tension had passed. 

Page well understood that the dismissal of Bernstorff 
at that time meant war with the Central Empires. Had 
this dismissal taken place in 1915, after the sinking of the 
Lusitania, or in 1916, after the sinking of the Sussex, Page 
believed that a simple break in relations would in itself 
have brought the war to an early end. But by February, 
1917, things had gone too far. For Germany had now 
decided to stake everything upon the chance of winning a 
quick victory with the submarine. Our policy had per- 
suaded the Kaiser’s advisers that America would not 
intervene; and the likelihood of rapidly starving Great 
Britain was so great—indeed the Germans had reduced the 
situation to a mathematical calculation of success—that 
an American declaration of war seemed to Berlin to be a 
matter of no particular importance. The American Am- 
bassador in London regarded Bernstorft’s dismissal much 
more seriously. It justified the mterpretations of events 
which he had been sending to Mr. Wilson, Colonel House, 
and others for nearly three years. If Page had been in- 
clined to take satisfaction in the fulfilment of his own pro- 
phecies, Germany’s disregard of her promises and the 
American declaration of war would have seemed an ample 
justification of his course as ambassador. 

But Page had little time for such vain communings. 
‘All that water,” as he now wrote, “‘has flowed over the 
dam.” Occasionally his mind would revert to the dread- 
ful period of “neutrality,’’ but in the main his activities, 
mental and physical, were devoted to the future. A 
letter addressed to his son Arthur shows how quickly and 
how sympathetically he was adjusting himself to the 
new prospect. His mind was now occupied with ships, 
food, armies, warfare on submarines, and the approaching 








Valter H. Page, at the time of America’s entry into the war, 
April, 1917 


AMERICAS ENTRANCE. INTO. THE WAR 





‘The 
Welcome of the Mother of Parliaments 


On Wednesday, April 18th, 4917, the two Houses of the British Parliament, 
after eloquent speeches by representatives of all Parties, passed with enthusiasm 


the following Resolution :— 


“That this House desires to express to the Government 
and people of the United States of America its profound 
appreciation of the action of that Government in joining 
the Allied Powers, and thus defending the high cause of 
freedom and the nights of humanity against the gravest 


menace by which they have ever been imperilled.” 


Mover in the House of Commons 


Seconder 


Mover in the House of Le 


PRESENTED TO THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR IN LONDON, 
HE D? WALTER HIMES PAGE. 
BY THE BRITISH PEACE-CENTENARY COMMITTEE. 
9 





Resolution passed by the two Houses of Parliament, April 18, 1917, 
on America’s entry into the war 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 2A Ts 


resettlement of the world. How completely he foresaw 
the part that the United States must play in the actual 
waging of hostilities, and to what an extent he himself was 
responsible for the policies that ultimately prevailed, ap- 
pears in this letter: 


To Arthur W. Page 


25 March, 1917, London. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 


It’s very hard, not to say impossible, to write in these 
swiftly moving days. Anything written to-day is out of 
date to-morrow—even if it be not wrong to start with. 
The impression becomes stronger here every day that we 
shall go into the war “with both feet’’—that the people 
have pushed the President over in spite of his vision of the 
Great Peacemaker, and that, being pushed over, his idea 
now will be to show how he led them into a glorious war 
in defense of democracy. That’s my reading of the situ- 
ation, and I hope [am not wrong. At any rate, ever since 
the call of Congress for April 2nd, I have been telegraph- 
ing tons of information and plans that can be of use only 
if we go to war. Habitually they never acknowledge the 
receipt of anything at Washington. I don’t know, there- 
fore, whether they like these pieces of information or not. 
I have my staff of twenty-five good men getting all sorts 
of warlike information; and I have just organized twenty- 
five or thirty more—the best business Americans in 
London—who are also at work. I am trying to get the 
Government at Washington to send over a committee or 
conference—a General, an Admiral, a Reserve Board man, 
etc., etc. If they do half the things that I recommend 
we'll be in at the final lickin’ big, and will save our souls 
yet. 

There’s lots of human nature in this world. A note is 


218 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


now sometimes heard here in undertone (Northcliffe strikes 
it)—that they don’t want the Americans in the war. 
This means that if we come in just as the Allies finish the 
job we'll get credit, in part, for the victory, which we did 
little to win! But that’s a minor note. The great mass 
of people do want us in, quick, hard, and strong—our 
money and our guns and our ships. 

A gift of a billion dollars' to France will fix Franco- 
American history all right for several centuries. Push it 
through. Such a gift could come to this Kingdom also 
but for the British stupidity about the Irish for three 
hundred years. A big loan to Great Britain at a low 
rate of interest will do the work here. 

My mind keeps constantly on the effect of the war and 
especially of our action on our own country. Of course 
that is the most important end of the thing for us. I hope 
that— 

1. It will break up and tear away our isolation; 

2. It will unhorse our cranks and soft-brains. 

3. It will make us less promiscuously hospitable to 
every kind of immigrant; 

4. It will reéstablish in our minds and conscience and 
policy our true historic genesis, background, kindred, and 
destiny—i. e., kill the Irish and the German influence. 

5. It will revive our real manhood—put the molly- 
coddles in disgrace, as idiots and dandies are; 

6. It will make our politics frank and manly by re- 
storing our true nationality ; 

7. It will make us again a great sea-faring people. It 
is this that has given Great Britain its long lead in the 
world; 

8. Break up our feminized education—make a boy a 





‘At this time the proposal of such a gift found much popular favour. Hows 
ever, the plan was not carried through. 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 219 


vigorous animal and make our education rest on a whole- 
some physical basis; 

9. Bring men of a higher type into our political life. 

We need waking up and shaking up and invigorating as 
much as the Germans need taking down. 

There is no danger of “militarism” in any harmful sense 
among any English race or in any democracy. 

By George! all these things open an interesting outlook 
and series of tasks—don’t they? | 

My staff and I are asking everybody what the Ameri- 
cans can best do to help the cause along. The views are 
not startling, but they are interesting. 

Jellicoe: More ships, merchant ships, any kind of 
ships, and take over the patrol of the American side of the 
Atlantic and release the British cruisers there. 

Balfour: American credits in the United States big 
enough to keep up the rate of exchange. 

Bonar Law: Same thing. 

The military men: An expeditionary force, no matter 
how small, for the effect of the American Flag in Europe. 
If one regiment marched through London and Paris and 
took the Flag to the front, that would be worth the win- 
ning of a battle. 

Think of the vast increase of territory and power Great 
Britain will have—her colonies drawn closer than ever, the 
German colonies, or most of them, taken over by her, Bag- 
dad hers—what a way Germany chose to lessen the Brit- 
ish Empire! And these gains of territory will be made, 
as most of her gains have been, not by any prearranged, set 
plan, but as by-products of action for some other purpose. 
The only people who have made a deliberate plan to con- 
quer the earth—now living—are the Germans. And from 
first to last the additions to the British Empire have been 
made because she has been a first-class maritime power. 


29() THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


And that’s the way she has made her trade and her money, 
too. 

On top of this the President speculates about the danger 
of the white man losing his supremacy because a few mil- 
lion men get killed! The truth is every country that is 
playing a big part in the war was overpopulated. There 
will be a considerable productive loss because the killed 
men were, as a rule, the best men; but the white man’s 
control of the world hasn’t depended on any few million 
of males. This speculation is far up in the clouds. If 
Russia and Germany really be liberated from social and 
political and industrial autocracy, this liberation will 
bring into play far more power than all the men killed in 
the war could have had under the pre-war régime. I ob- 
serve this with every year of my observation—there’s no 
substitute for common-sense. 

The big results of the war will, after all, be the freedom 
and the stimulation of men in these weary Old-World 
lands—in Russia, Germany itself, and in England. In five 
or ten years (or sooner, alas!) the dead will be forgotten. 

If you wish to make a picture of the world as it will be 
when the war ends, you must conjure up such scenes as 
these—human bones along the Russian highways where 
the great retreat took place and all that such a sight de- 
notes; Poland literally starved; Serbia, blasted and burned 
and starved; Armenia butchered; the horrible tragedy of 
Gallipoli, where the best soldiers in the world were sacrificed 
to politicians’ policies; Austria and Germany starved and 
whipped but liberalized—perhaps no king in either coun- 
try; Belgium—belgiumized; northern France the same 
and worse; more productive Frenchmen killed in propor- 
tion to the population perhaps than any other country 
will have lost; Great Britain—most of her best men gone 
or maimed ;colossal debts;several Teutonic countries bank- 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR LOM 


rupt; every atrocity conceivable committed somewhere— 
a hell-swept great continent having endured more suffer- 
ing in three years than in the preceding three hundred. 
Then, ten years later, most of this suffering a mere mem- 
ory; governments reorganized and liberalized; men made 
more efficient by this strenuous three years’ work; the 
fields got back their bloom, and life going on much as it 
did before—with this chief difference—some kings have 
gone and many privileges have been abolished. ‘The 
lessons are two—(1) that no government can successfully 
set out and conquer the world; and (2) that the hold that 
privilege holders acquire costs more to dislodge than any 
one could ever have guessed. That’s the sum of it. Kings 
and privilege mongers, of course, have held the parts of 
the world separate from one another. They fatten on 
provincialism, which is mistaken for patriotism. As 
they lose their grip, human sympathy has its natural play 
between nations, and civilization has a chance. With any 
Emperor of Germany left the war will have been half in 
vain. 

If we (the U.S. A.) cultivate the manly qualities and 
throw off our cranks and read our own history and be true 
to our traditions and blood and get some political vigour; 
then if we emancipate ourselves from the isolation theory 
and from the landlubber theory—get into the world and 
build ships, ships, ships, ships, and run them to the ends of 
the seas, we can dominate the world in trade and in politi- 
cal thought. 

You know I have moments when it occurs to me that 
perhaps I’d better give whatever working years I may 
have to telling this story—the story of the larger meaning of 
the war. There’s no bigger theme—never was one so big. 

Affectionately, 
Wie 


992 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


On April Ist, the day before President Wilson made his 
great address before Congress requesting that body to de- 
clare the existence of a state of war with Germany, Page 
committed to paper a few paragraphs which summed up 
his final judgment of President Wilson’s foreign policy for 
the preceding two and a half years. 


Embassy of the United States of America, 
April 1, 1917. 

In these last days, before the United States is forced 
into war—hy the people’s insistence—the preceding course 
of events becomes even clearer than it was before; and it 
has been as clear all the time as the nose on a man’s face. 

The President began by refusing to understand the 
meaning of the war. To him it seemed a quarrel to settle 
economic rivalries between Germany and England. He 
said to me last September! that there were many causes 
why Germany went to war. He showed a great degree 
of toleration for Germany; and he was, during the whole 
morning that I talked with him, complaining of England. 
The controversies we had with England were, of course, 
mere by-products of the conflict. But to him they 
seemed as important as the controversy we had with Ger- 
many. In the beginning he had made—as far as it was 
possible—neutrality a positive quality of mind. He would 
not move from that position. 

That was his first error of judgment. And by insisting 
on this he soothed the people—sat them down in com- 
fortable chairs and said, “Now stay there.” He really 
suppressed speech and thought. 

The second error he made was in thinking that he could 





‘At the meeting of Page and the President at Shadow Lawn, September 22, 
1916. See Chapter XIX. 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 205 


play a great part as peacemaker—come and give a blessing 
to these erring children. This was strong in his hopes and 
ambitions. There was a condescension in this attitude 
that was offensive. 

He shut himself up with these two ideas and engaged 
in what he called “thought.’’ The air currents of the 
world never ventilated his mind. 

This inactive position he has kept as long as public senti- 
ment permitted. He seems no longer to regard himself 
nor to speak as a leader—only as the mouthpiece of public 
opinion after opinion has run over him. 

He has not breathed a spirit into the people: he has 
encouraged them to supineness. He is not a leader, but 
rather a stubborn phrasemaker. 

And now events and the aroused people seem to have 
brought the President to the necessary point of action; 
and even now he may act timidly. 


“One thing pleases me,” Page wrote to his son Arthur, 
‘“T never lost faith in the American people. It is now 
clear that I was right in feeling that they would have 
gladly come in any time after the Lusitania crime, Middle 
West in the front, and that the German hasn’t made any 
real impression on the American nation. He was made 
a bug-a-boo and worked for all he was worth by Bern- 
storff; and that’s the whole story. We are as Anglo- 
Saxon as we ever were. If Hughes had had sense and 
courage enough to say: ‘I’m for war, war to save our 
honour and to save democracy, he would now be President. 
If Wilson had said that, Hughes would have carried no 
important states in the Union. The suppressed people 
would have risen to either of them. That’s God’s truth as 
I believe it. The real United States is made up of you 


994. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


and Frank and the Page boys at Aberdeen and of the 
10,000,000 other young fellows who are ready to do the 
job and who instinctively see the whole truth of the situa- 
tion. But of course what the people would not have done 
under certain conditions—that water also has flowed over 
the dam; and I mention it only because I have resolutely 
kept my faith in the people and there has been nothing in 
recent events that has shaken it.”’ 

Two letters which Page wrote on this same April Ist 
are interesting in that they outline almost completely the 
war policy that was finally carried out: 


To Frank N. Doubleday 


Embassy of the United States of America, 
April 1, 1917. 
DEAR EFFENDI: 

Here’s the programme: 

(1) Our navy in immediate action in whatever way a 
conference with the British shows we can best help. 

(2) A small expeditionary force to France immedi- 
ately—as large as we can quickly make ready, if only 
10,000 men—as proof that we are ready to do some fight- 
ing. 

(3) A large expeditionary force as soon as the men can 
be organized and equipped. They can be trained into an 
effective army in France in about one fourth of the time 
that they could be trained anywhere else. 

(4) A large loan to the Allies at a low rate of interest. 

(5) Ships, ships, ships—troop ships, food ships, muni- 
tion ships, auxiliary ships to the navy, wooden ships, steel 
ships, little ships, big ships, ships, ships, ships without 
number or end. 

(6) A clear-cut expression of the moral issue involved 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR eae 


in the war. Every social and political ideal that we 
stand for is at stake. If we value democracy in the 
world, this is the chance to further it or—to bring it into 
utter disrepute. After Russia must come Germany and 
Austria; and then the King-business will pretty nearly be 
put out of commission. 

(7) We must go to war in dead earnest. We must 
sign the Allies’ agreement not to make a separate peace, 
and we must stay in to the end. Then the end will be 
very greatly hastened. 

It’s been four years ago to-day since I was first asked to 
come here. God knows I’ve done my poor best to save 
our country and tohelp. It'll be four years in the middle 
of May since I sailed. I shall stilldo my best. Il not be 
able to start back by May 15th, but I have a feeling, if 
we do our whole duty in the United States, that the end 
may not be very many months off. And how long off it 
may be may depend to a considerable degree on our ac- 
tion. 

We are faring very well on army rations. None of us 
will live to see another time when so many big things are 
at stake nor another time when our country can play so 
large or important a part in saving the world. Hold up 
your end. I’m doing my best here. 

I think of you engaged in the peaceful work of instruct- 
ing the people, and I think of the garden and crocuses and 
the smell of early spring in the air and the earth and— 
push on; I’ll be with you before we grow much older or 
get much grayer; and a great and prosperous and peaceful 
time will lie before us. Pity me and hold up your end for 
real American participation. Get together? Yes; but 
the way to get together is to get in! 

Affectionately, 
WER: 


226 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


To David F. Houston! 


Embassy of the United States of America, 
April 1, 1917. 
DEAR Houston: 

The Administration can save itself from becoming a 
black blot on American history only by vigorous action— 
acts such as these: 

Putting our navy to work—vigorous work—wherever 
and however is wisest. I have received the Government’s 
promise to send an Admiral here at once for a conference. 
We must work out with the British Navy a programme 
whereby we can best help; and we must carry it without 
hesitancy or delay. 

Sending over an expeditionary military force immedi- 
ately—a small one, but as large as we can, as an earnest 
of a larger one to come. This immediate small one will 
have a good moral effect; and we need all the moral rein- 
statement that we can get in the estimation of the world; 
our moral stock is lower than, I fear, any of you at home 
can possibly realize. As for a larger expeditionary force 
later—even that ought to be sent quite early. It can and 
must spend some time in training in France, whatever its 
training beforehand may have been. All the military men 
agree that soldiers in France back of the line can be trained 
in at least half the time that they can be trained 
anywhere else. ‘The officers at once take their turn in the 
trenches, and the progress that they and their men make in 
close proximity to the fighting is one of the remarkable dis- 
coveries of the war. The British Army was so trained 
and all the colonial forces. Two or three or four hundred 
thousand Americans could be sent over as soon almost as 
they are organized and equipped—provided transports 


‘Secretary of Agriculture in President Wilson’s Cabinet. 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR rae 


and a continuous supply of food and munition ships can 
be got. They can be trained into fighting men—into an 
effective army—in about one third of the time that would 
be required at home. | 

I suppose, of course, we shall make at once a large 
loan to the Allies at a low rate of interest. That is most 
important, but that alone will not save us. We must also 
fight. 

All the ships we can get—build, requisition, or confiscate 
—are needed immediately 

Navy, army, money, ships—these are the first things, 
but by no means all. We must make some expression of 
a conviction that there is a moral question of right and 
wrong involved in this war—a question of humanity, a 
question of democracy. So far we have (officially) spoken 
only of the wrongs done to our ships and citizens. Deep 
wrongs have been done to all our moral ideas, to our 
ideals. We have sunk very low in European opinion be- 
cause we do not seem to know even yet that a German 
victory would be less desirable than (say) a Zulu victory 
of the world. 

We must go in with the Allies, not begin a mere single 
fight against submarines. We must sign the pact of 
London—not make a separate peace. 

We mustn’t longer spin dreams about peace, nor 
leagues to enforce peace, nor the Freedom of the Seas. 
These things are mere intellectual diversions of minds 
out of contact with realities. Every political and social 
ideal we have is at stake. If we make them secure, we'll 
save Europe from destruction and save ourselves, too. 

I pray for vigour and decision and clear-cut resolute ac- 
tion. 

(1) The Navy—full strength, no “grapejuice”’ action. 

(2) An immediate expeditionary force. 


2°98 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


(3) A larger expeditionary force very soon. 

(4) <A large loan at a low interest. 

(5) Ships, ships, ships. 

(6) <A clear-cut expression of the moral issue. Thus 
(and only thus) can we swing into a new era, with a world 
born again. 

Yours in strictest confidence, 
Wiel 22 


A memorandum, written on April 3rd, the day after 
President Wilson advised Congress to declare a state of 
war with Germany: 


The Day 


When I went to see Mr. Balfour to-day he shook my 
hand warmly and said: “It’s a great day for the world.”’ 
And so has everybody said, in one way or another, that I 
have met to-day. 

The President’s speech did not appear in the morning 
papers—only a very brief summary in one or two of them; 
but the meaning of it was clear. The fact that the House 
of Representatives organized itself in one day and that 
the President addressed Congress on the evening of that 
day told the story. The noon papers had the President’s 
speech in full; and everybody applauds. 

My “Cabinet” meeting this morning was unusually 
interesting; and the whole group has never before been 
so delighted. I spoke of the suggestive, constructive 
work we have already done in making reports on various 
war preparations and activities of this kingdom. “Now 
we have greater need than ever, every man to do con- 
structive work—to think of plans to serve. We are in 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 229 


this excellent strategical position in the capital of the 
greatest belligerent—a position which I thank my stars, 
the President, and all the powers that be for giving us. 
We can each strive to justify our existence.” 

Few visitors called; but enthusiastic letters have begun 
to come in. 

Nearly the whole afternoon was spent with Mr. Balfour 
and Lord Robert Cecil. Mr. Balfour had a long list of 
subjects. Could we help in (1)—(2)—(3)?— _ Every once 
in a while he stopped his enumeration of subjects long 
enough to tell me how the action of the United States had 
moved him. 

To Lord Robert I said: “I pray you, give the Black 
List a decent burial: It’s dead now, but through no act of 
yours. It insulted every American because you did not 
see that it was insulting: that’s the discouraging fact to 
me.” He thanked meearnestly. He'll think about that. 


II 


These jottings give only a faint impression of the 
change which the American action wrought in Page. The 
strain which he had undergone for twenty-nine months 
had been intense; it had had the most unfortunate effect 
upon his health; and the sudden lifting might have pro- 
duced that reaction for the worse which is not unusual 
after critical experiences of this kind. But the gratifica- 
tion which Page felt in the fact that the American spirit 
had justified his confidence gave him almost a certain 
exuberance of contentment. Londoners who saw him at 
that time describe him as acting like a man from whose 
shoulders a tremendous weight had suddenly been re- 
moved. For more than two years Page had been com- 
pelled, officially at least, to assume a “neutrality” with 


930 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


which he had never had the slightest sympathy, but the 
necessity for this mask now no longer existed. A well- 
known Englishman happened to meet Page leaving his 
house in Grosvenor Square the day after the Declaration 
of War. He stopped and shook the Ambassador’s hand. 

“Thank God,” the Englishman said, “that there is one 
hypocrite less in London to-day.” 

‘What do you mean?” asked Page. 

“T mean you. Pretending all this time that you were 
neutral! That isn’t necessary any longer.” 

“You are right!” the Ambassador answered as he 
walked on with a laugh and a wave of the hand. 

A few days after the Washington Declaration, the Ameri- 
can Luncheon Club held a feast in honour of the event. 
This organization had a membership of representative 
American business men in London, but its behaviour during 
the war had not been based upon Mr. Wilson’s idea of 
neutrality. Indeed its tables had so constantly rung with 
denunciations of the Lusitania notes that all members 
of the American Embassy, from Page down, had found 
it necessary to refrain from attending its proceedings. 
When Page arose to address his compatriots on this occa- 
sion, therefore, he began with the significant words, “I am 
glad to be back with you again,” and the mingled laughter 
and cheers with which this remark was received indicated 
that his hearers had caught the point. 

The change took place not only in Page, but in London 
and the whole of Great Britain. An England that had been 
saying harsh things of the United States for nearly two 
years now suddenly changed its attitude. Both houses 
of Parliament held commemorative sessions in honour 
of America’s participation; in the Commons Mr. Lloyd 
George, Mr. Asquith, and other leaders welcomed their 
new allies, and in the Upper Chamber Lord Curzon, Lord 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR Ow 


Bryce, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others similarly 
voiced their admiration. The Stars and Stripes almost 
instantaneously broke out on private dwellings, shops, 
hotels, and theatres; street hucksters did a thriving busi- 
ness selling rosettes of the American colours, which even 
the most stodgy Englishmen did not disdain to wear in 
their buttonholes; wherever there was a band or an or- 
chestra, the Star Spangled Banner acquired a sudden 
popularity; and the day even came when the American 
and the British flags flew side by side over the Houses of 
Parliament—the first occasion in history that any other 
than the British standard had received this honour. The 
editorial outgivings of the British press on America’s en- 
trance form a literature all their own. The theatres and 
the music halls, which had found in “notes”’ and “‘nootral- 
ity’’ an endless theme of entertainment for their patrons, 
now sounded Americanism as their most popular refrain. 
Churches and cathedrals gave special services in honour 
of American intervention, and the King and the President 
began to figure side by the side in the prayer book. The 
estimation in which President Wilson was held changed 
overnight. All the phrases that had so grieved English- 
men were instantaneously forgotten. The President’s 
address before Congress was praised as one of the most 
eloquent and statesmanlike utterances in history. Special 
editions of this heartening document had a rapid sale; it 
was read in school houses, churches, and at public gather- 
ings, and it became a most influential force in uplifting the 
hopes of the Allies and inspiring them to renewed activi- 
ties. Americans everywhere, in the streets, at dinner 
tables, and in general social intercourse, could feel the new 
atmosphere of respect and admiration which had suddenly 
become their country’s portion. The first American 
troops that passed through London—a company of en- 


932 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


gineers, an especially fine body of men—aroused a popu- 
lar enthusiasm which was almost unprecedented in a 
capital not celebrated for its emotional displays. Page 
himself records one particularly touching indication of the 
feeling for Americans which was now universal. “The 
increasing number of Americans who come through Eng- 
land,” he wrote, “most of them on their way to France, 
but some of them also to serve in England, give much 
pleasure to the British public—nurses, doctors, railway 
engineers, sawmill units, etc. The sight of every Ameri- 
can uniform pleases London. The other morning a group 
of American nurses gathered with the usual crowd in front 
of Buckingham Palace while the Guards band played in- 
side the gates. Man after man as they passed them and 
saw their uniforms lifted their hats.” 

The Ambassador’s mail likewise underwent a complete 
transformation. His correspondence of the preceding 
two years, enormous in its extent, had contained much 
that would have disturbed a man who could easily get 
excited over trifles, but this aspect of his work never 
caused Page the slightest unhappiness. Almost every 
crank in England who disliked the American policy had 
seemed to feel it his duty to express his opinions to the 
American Ambassador. These letters, at times sorrow- 
ful, at others abusive, even occasionally threatening, vary- 
ing in their style from cultivated English to the grossest 
illiteracy, now written in red ink to emphasize their bitter- 
ness, now printed in large block letters to preserve their 
anonymity, aroused in Page only a temporary amusement. 
But the letters that began to pour in upon him after our 
Declaration, many of them from the highest placed men 
and women in the Kingdom, brought out more vividly 
than anything else the changed position of his country. 
Sonnets and verses rained upon the Embassy, most of 





© Harris & Ewing 


The Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George, Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, 1908-1915, Minister of Munitions, 
1915-1916, Prime Minister of Great Britain , 1916-1922 








The Rt. Hon. Arthur James Balfour (now the Earl of Balfour) 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1916-1919 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR Doe 


them pretty bad as poetry, but all of them commend- 
able for their admiring and friendly spirit. Of all these 
letters those that came from the steadfast friends of Amer- 
ica perhaps gave Page the greatest satisfaction. ‘You 
will have been pleased at the universal tribute paid to the 
spirit as well as to the lofty and impressive terms of the 
President’s speech,’ wrote Lord Bryce. ‘‘ Nothing finer 
in our time, few things so fine.””. But probably the letter 
which gave Page the greatest pleasure was that which 
came from the statesman whose courtesy and broad out- 
look had eased the Ambassador’s task in the old neutrality 
days. In 1916, Sir Edward Grey—now become Viscount 
Grey of Fallodon—had resigned office, forced out, Page 
says in one of his letters, mainly because he had refused to 
push the blockade to a pomt where it might produce a 
break with the United States. He had spent the larger 
part of the time since that event at his country place in 
Northumberland, along the streams and the forests which 
had always given him his greatest pleasure, attempting to 
recover something of the health that he had lost in the ten 
years which he had spent as head of the British Foreign 
Office and bearing with characteristic cheerfulness and 
fortitude the tragedy of a gradually failing eyesight. 
The American Declaration of War now came to Lord Grey 
as the complete justification of his policy. The main- 
spring of that policy, as already explained, had been a 
determination to keep the friendship of the United States, 
and so shape events that the support of this country 
would ultimately be cast on the side of the Allies. And 
now the great occasion for which he had prepared had 
come, and in Grey’s mind this signified more than a help 
to England in soldiers and ships; it meant bringing to- 
gether the two branches of a common race for the promo- 
tion of common ideals. 


234. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE) 


From Viscount Grey of Fallodon 


Rosehall Post Office, 
Sutherland, 
April 8, 1917. 
Dear Mr. Pace: 

This is a line that needs no answer to express my con- 
gratulations on President Wilson’s address. I can’t ex- 
press adequately all that I feel. Great gratitude and 
great hope are in my heart. I hope now that some 
great and abiding good to the world will yet be wrought 
out of all this welter of evil. Recent events in Russia, too, 
stimulate this hope: they are a good in themselves, but not 
the power for good in this war that a great and firmly 
established free country like the United States can be. 
The President’s address and the way it has been followed 
up in your country is a splendid instance of great action 
finely inspired. I glow with admiration. 

Yours sincerely, 
GREY OF FALLODON 


One Englishman who was especially touched by the 
action of the United States was His Majesty the King. 
Few men had watched the course of America during the 
war with more intelligent interest than the head of the 
British royal house. Page had had many interviews with 
King George at Buckingham Palace and at Windsor, and 
his notes contain many appreciative remarks on the King’s 
high character and conscientious devotion to his duties. 
That Page in general did not believe in kings and emper- 
ors as institutions his letters reveal; yet even so profound 
a Republican as he recognized sterling character, whether 
in a crowned head or in a humble citizen, and he had seen 
enough of King George to respect him. Moreover, 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 235 


the peculiar limitations of the British monarchy cer- 
tainly gave it an unusual position and even saved it 
from much of the criticism that was fairly lavished upon 
such nations as Germany and Austria. Page especially 
admired King George’s frankness in recognizing these 
limitations and his readiness to accommodate himself 
to the British Constitution. On most occasions, when 
these two men met, their intercourse was certainly friendly 
or at least not formidable. After all formalities had been 
exchanged, the King would frequently draw the Ambassa- 
dor aside; the two would retire to the smoking room, and 
there, over their cigars, discuss a variety of matters—sub- 
marines, international politics, the Irish question and the 
like. His Majesty was not averse even to bringing up 
the advantages of the democratic and the monarchical 
system. The King and Ambassador would chat, as Page 
himself would say, like “two human beings”; King 
George is an emphatic and vivacious talker, fond of em- 
phasizing his remarks by pounding the table; he has the 
liveliest sense of humour, and enjoys nothing quite so 
much as a good story. Page found that, on the subject 
of the Germans, the King entertained especially robust 
views. “They are my kinsmen,” he would say, “but I 
am ashamed of them.” 

Probably most Englishmen, in the early days of the war, 
preferred that the United States should not engage in 
hostilities; even after the Lusitania, the majority in all 
likelihood held this view. There are indications, how- 
ever, that King George favoured American participation. 
A few days after the Lusitania sinking, Page had an au- 
dience for the purpose of presenting a medal sent by cer- 
tain societies in New Orleans. Neither man was thinking 
much about medals that morning. The thoughts upper- 
most in their minds, as in the minds of most Americans and 


936 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Englishmen, were the Lusitania and the action that the 
United States was likely to take concerning it. After the 
formalities of presentation, the King asked Page to sit 
down and talked with him for more than half an hour. 
‘He said that Germany was evidently trying to force the 
United States into the war; that he had no doubt we would 
soon be in it and that, for his part, he would welcome us 
heartily. The King also said he had reliable information 
from Germany, that the Emperor had wished to return 
a conciliatory answer to our Lusitania note, but that 
Admiral von Tirpitz had prevented it, even going so far 
as to ‘threaten’ the Kaiser. It appears that the Admiral 
insisted that the submarine was the only weapon the 
Germans could use with effect against England and that 
they could not afford to give it up. He was violent and 
the Kaiser finally yielded.’”! 

The statement from the King at that crisis, that he 
would “heartily welcome the United States into the war,” 
was interpreted by the Ambassador as amounting practi- 
cally to an invitation—and certainly as expressing a wish 
that such an intervention should take place. 

That the American participation would rejoice King 
George could therefore be taken for granted. Soon after 
this event, the Ambassador and Mrs. Page were invited to 
spend the night at Windsor. 

“T arrived during the middle of the afternoon,” writes 
Page, “and he sent for me to talk with him in his office. 

‘““<T’ve a good story on you,’ said he. ‘You Americans 
have a queer use of the word “‘some,” to express mere big- 
ness or emphasis. We are taking that use of the word 
from you over here. Well, an American and an English- 
man were riding in the same railway compartment. The 





1The quotation is from a memorandum of the conversation made by one of the 
secretaries of the American Embassy. 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR ee i 


American read his paper diligently—all the details of a big 
battle. When he got done, he put the paper down and said: 
‘*Some fight!’’ ‘‘And some don’t!”’ said the Englishman.’ 

“And the King roared. ‘A good one on you!’ 

“*The trouble with that joke, sir,’ I ventured to reply, 
‘is that it’s out of date.’ 

“He was in a very gay mood, surely because of our 
entry into the war. After the dinner—there were no 
guests except Mrs. Page and me, the members of his house- 
hold, of course, being present—he became even familiar 
in the smoking room. He talked about himself and his 
position as king. ‘Knowing the difficulties of a limited 
monarch, I thank heaven I am spared being an absolute 
one.’ 

“He went on to enumerate the large number of things 
he was obliged to do, for example, to sign the death war- 
rant of every condemned man—and the little real power 
that he had—not at all in a tone of complaint, but as a 
merely impersonal explanation. 

“Just how much power—perhaps ‘influence’ is a better 
word—the King has, depends on his personality. The 
influence of the throne—and of him on the throne, being a 
wholly thoughtful, industrious, and conscientious man— 
is very great—greatest of all in keeping the vested inter- 
ests of the aristocratic social structure secure. 

“Earlier than this visit to Windsor he sent for me to go 
to Buckingham Palace very soon after we declared war. 
He went over the whole course of events—and asked me 
many questions. After I had risen and said ‘good-bye’ 
and was about to bow myself out the door, he ran toward 
me and waving his hand cried out, “Ah—Ah!—we knew 
where you stood all the time.’ 

“When General Pershing came along on his way to 
France, the King summoned us to luncheon. The 


938 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


luncheon was eaten (here, as everywhere, strict war ra- 
tions are observed) to a flow of general talk, with the 
Queen, Princess Mary, and one of the young Princes. 
When they had gone from the luncheon room, the King, 
General Pershing, and I stood smoking by the window; and 
the King at once launched into talk about guns, rifles, 
ammunition, and the American place in the battle line. 
Would our place be with the British or with the French or 
between the two? 

“General Pershing made a diplomatic reply. So far as 
he knew the President hadn’t yet made a final decision, 
but there was a feeling that, since we were helping the 
British at sea, perhaps we ought to help the French on 
land. 

“Then the King expressed the earnest hope that our 
guns and ammunition would match either the British or 
the French. Else if we happened to run out of ammuni- 
tion we could not borrow from anybody. He thought it 
most unfortunate that the British and French guns and 
rifles were of different calibres.”’ 


To Arthur W.:Page 


Brighton, England, 
April 28, 1917. 
Dear ARTHUR: 

Well, the British have given us a very good 
welcome into the war. They are not very skillful at such 
a task: they do not know how to say “Welcome” very 
vociferously. But they have said it to the very best of 
their ability. My speeches (which I send you, with 
some comment) were very well received indeed. Simple 
and obvious as they were, they meant a good deal of work. 

I cannot conceal nor can I express my gratification that 
we are in the war. I shall always wonder but never find 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 239 


out what influence I had in driving the President over. 
All I know is that my letters and telegrams for nearly 
two years—especially for the last twelve months—have 
put before him every reason that anybody has expressed 
why we should come in—in season and out of season. 
And there is no new reason—only more reason of the same 
old sort—why we should have come in now than there was 
why we should have come ina year ago. I suspect that the 
pressure of the press and of public opinion really became 
too strong for him. And, of course, the Peace-Dream 
blew up—was torpedoed, mined, shot, captured, and 
killed. I trust, too, much enlightenment will be furnished 
by the two Commissions now in Washington.' Yet it’s 
comical to think of the attitude of the poor old Depart- 
ment last September and its attitude now. But thank 
God for it! Every day now brings a confession of the 
blank idiocy of its former course and its long argument! 
Never mind that, so long as we are now right. 

I have such a sense of relief that I almost feel that my 
job is now done. Yet, I dare say, my most important 
work is still to come. 

The more I try to reach some sort of rational judgment 
about the war, the more I find myself at sea. It does look 
as if the very crisis is near. And there can be no doubt 
now—not even, I hope, in the United States—about the 
necessity of a clear and decisive victory, nor about 
punishment. All the devastation of Northern France, 
which outbarbarizes barbarism, all the ships sunk, in- 
cluding hospital ships, must be paid for; that’s all. There’ll 
be famine in Europe whenever it end. Not only must 
these destructions be paid for, but the Hohenzollerns and 
all they stand for must go. Trust your Frenchman for 
that, if nobody else! 
~ IThe British and French Commissions, headed by Mr. Balfour and M. Viviani. 


2940 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


If Europe had the food wasted in the United States, 
it would make the difference between sustenance and 
famine. By the way, the submarine has made every 
nation a danger zone except those few that have self- 
feeding continents, such as ours. It can bring famine 
to any other kind of a country. 

You are now out in the country again—good. Give 
Mollie my love and help her with the garden. I envy 
you the fresh green things to eat. Little Mollie, kiss 
her for granddaddy. The Ambassador, I suppose, waxes 
even sturdier, and I’m glad to hear that A. W. P., Jr., is 
picking up. Get him fed right at all costs. If Frank 
stays at home and Ralph and his family come up, you'll 
all have a fine summer. We've the very first hint of sum- 
mer we've had, and it’s cheerful to see the sky and to feel 
the sunshine. 

Affectionately, 
Wee 


To Frank N. Doubleday 


American Embassy, 


London, May 3, 1917. 
DEAR EFFENDI: 


I aim this at you. It may hit a German submarine. 
But we've got to take our chances in these days of risk. 
Your letter from the tropics—a letter from you from any 
place is as scarce as peace!—gave me a pleasant thrill and 
reminder of a previous state of existence, a long way back 
in the past. I wonder if, on your side the ocean you are 
living at the rate of a century a year, as we are here? 
Here in bountiful England we are living on rations. | 
spent a night with the King a fortnight ago, and he gave 
us only so much bread, one egg apiece, and—lemenade. 
We are to begin bread tickets next week. All this is per- 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 2At 


fectly healthful and wholesome and as much as I ever eat. 
But the hard part of it is that it’s necessary. We haven't 
more than six weeks’ food supply and the submarines 
sunk eighty-eight ships—237,000 tons—last week. These 
English do not publish these harrowing facts, and nobody 
knows them but a few official people. And they are de- 
stroying the submarines at a most beggarly slow rate. 
They work far out at sea—100 to 200 miles—and it’s as 
hard to find them as it would be to find whales. The sim- 
ple truth is we are in a dangerous plight. If they could 
stop this submarine warfare, the war would pretty quickly 
be won, for the Germans are in a far worse plight for food 
and materials and they are getting much the worst of it 
on land. The war would be won this summer or autumn 
if the submarine could be put out of business. If it isn’t, 
the Germans may use this success to keep their spirits up 
and go on till next year. 

We (the United States) have about 40 destroyers. We 
are sending over 6! I’m doing my best to persuade the 
Government at Washington to send every one we have. 
But, since the British conceal the facts from their own 
press and the people and from all the world, the full pres- 
sure of the situation is hard to exert on Washington. Our 
Admiral (Sims) and I are trying our best, and we are 
spending enough on cables to build a destroyer. All this, 
you must, of course, regard as a dark secret; but it’s a 
devilish black secret. 

I don’t mean that there’s any danger of losing the war. 
Even if the British armies have to have their food cut 
down and people here go hungry, they'll win; but the 
winning may be a long time off. Nothing but their con- 
tinued success can keep the Germans going. Their peo- 
ple are war-weary and hungry. Austria is knocked out 
and is starving. Turkey is done up but can go on living 


242 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


on nothing, but not fighting much more. When peace 
comes, there'll be a general famine, on the continent at 
least, and no ships to haul food. This side of the world 
will have to start life all over again—with insufficient 
men to carry things on and innumerable maimed men 
who'll have (more or less) to be cared for. The horror of 
the whole thing nobody realizes. We've all got used to 
it here; and nobody clearly remembers just what the world 
was like in peace times; those times were so far away. All 
this I write not to fill you with horrors but to prove that 
I speak the literal truth when I say that it seems a hundred 
years since I had before heard from you. 

Just how all this affects a man, no man can accurately 
tell. Of how much use I’ll be when I can get home, I 
don’t know. Sometimes I think that I shall be of vastly 
greater use than ever. Plans and publishing ambitions 
pop up in my mind at times which look good and promis- 
ing. I see books and series of books. I see most useful 
magazine stuff. Then, before I can think anything out 
to a clear plan or conclusion, the ever-increasing official 
duties and responsibilities here knock everything else out 
of my head, perhaps for a whole month. It’s a literal 
fact that many a month I do not have an hour to do with 
as I please nor to think about what I please, from the time 
I wake up till I go to bed. In spite of twenty-four secre- 
taries (the best fellows that ever were and the best staff 
that any Embassy ever had in the world) more and more 
work comes to me. I thank Heaven we no longer have 
the interests of Germany, Austria, and Turkey to look 
after; but with our coming into the war, work in general 
has increased enormously. I have to spend very much 
more time with the different departments of the British 
Government on war plans and such like things. They 
have welcomed us in very handsomely; and one form of 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 243 


their welcome is consulting with me about—navy plans, 
war plans, loans of billions, ships, censorship, secret ser- 
vice—everything you ever heard of. At first it seemed a 
little comical for the admirals and generals and the Gover- 
nor of the Bank of England to come and ask for advice. 
But when I gave it and it worked out well, I went on 
and, after all, the thing’s easier than it looks. With a 
little practice you can give these fellows several points in 
the game and play a pretty good hand. They don’t know 
half as much as you might suppose they’d know. All 
these years of lecturing the State Department and the 
President got my hand in! The whole game is far easier 
than any small business. You always play with blue 
chips better than you play with white ones. 

This country and these people are not the country and 
the people they were three years ago. They are very 
different. They are much more democratic, far less 
cocksure, far less haughty, far humbler. The man at the 
head of the army rose from the ranks. The Prime Minis- 
ter is a poor Welsh schoolteacher’s son, without early 
education. The man who controls all British shipping 
began life as a shipping “clark,” at ten shillings a week. 
Yet the Lords and Ladies, too, have shown that they were 
made of the real stuff. This experience is making England 
over again. There never was a more interesting thing to 
watch and to be part of. 

There are about twenty American organizations here— 
big, little, rag-tag, and bobtail. When we declared war, 
every one of ’em proceeded to prepare for some sort of 
celebration. There would have been an epidemic of 
Fourth-of-July oratory all over the town—before we'd 
done anything—Americans spouting over the edges and 
killing Kruger with their mouths. I got representatives 
of ’em all together and proposed that we hold our tongues 


244 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


till we’d won the war—then we can take London. And 
to give one occasion when we might all assemble and dedi- 
cate ourselves to this present grim business, I arranged for 
an American Dedicatory Service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. 
The royal family came, the Government came, the Allied 
diplomats came, my Lords and Ladies came, one hundred 
wounded American (Canadian) soldiers came—the pick 
of the Kingdom; my Navy and Army staff went in full 
uniform, the Stars and Stripes hung before the altar, a 
double brass band played the Star Spangled Banner and 
the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and an American bishop 
(Brent) preached a red-hot American sermon, the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury delivered the benediction; and (for 
the first time in English history) a foreign flag (the Stars 
and Stripes) flew over the Houses of Parliament. It was 
the biggest occasion, so they say, that St. Paul’s ever had. 
And there’s been no spilling of American oratory since! 
If you had published a shilling edition of the words and 
music of the Star Spangled Banner and the Battle Hymn 
you could have sent a cargo of ’em here and sold them. 
There isn’t paper enough in this Kingdom to get out an 
edition here. 

Give my love to all the Doubledays and to all the fellows 
in the shop, and (I wonder if you will) try your hand at 
another letter. You write very legibly these days! 

Sincerely yours, 
WALTER H. Pace. 


‘Curiously enough,’ Page wrote about this time, “these 
most exciting days of the war are among the most barren 
of exciting topics for private correspondence. The ‘at- 
mosphere’ here is unchanging—to us—and the British are 
turning their best side to us continuously. They are 
increasingly appreciative, and they see more and more 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 245 


clearly that our coming into the war is all that saved them 
from a virtual defeat—I mean the public sees this more 
and more clearly, for, of course, the Government has 
known it from the beginning. I even find a sort of mor- 
bid fear lest they do not sufficiently show their apprecia- 
tion. The Archbishop last night asked me in an appre- 
hensive tone whether the American Government and 
public felt that the British did not sufficiently show their 
eratitude. I told him that we did not come into the war 
to win compliments but to whip the enemy, and that we 
wanted all the help the British can give: that’s the main 
thing; and that thereafter of course we liked appreciation, 
but that expressions of appreciation had not been lacking. 
Mr. Balfour and Sir Edward Carson also spoke to me 
yesterday much in the same tone as the Archbishop of 
Canterbury. 

“Try to think out any line of action that one will, or 
any future sequence or events or any plan touching the 
war, one runs into the question whether the British are 
doing the best that could be done or are merely plugging 
away. They are, as a people, slow and unimaginative, 
given to over-much self-criticism; but they eternally hold 
on to a task or to a policy. Yet the question forever 
arises whether they show imagination, to say nothing of 
genius, and whether the waste of a slow, plodding policy 
is the necessary price of victory. 

“Of course such a question is easy to ask and it is easy 
to give dogmatic answers. But it isn’t easy to give an 
answer based on facts. Our General Lassiter,! for in- 
stance—a man of sound judgment—has in general been 
less hopeful of the military situation in France than most 
of the British officers. But he is just now returned from 
the front, much cheered and encouraged. ‘Lassiter,’ I 


1American military attaché in London. 


246 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


asked, ‘have the British in France or has any man among 
them what we call genius, or even wide vision; or are they 
merely plodding along at a mechanical task?’ His 
answer was, ‘We don’t see genius till rt has done its job. 
It is amechanical task—yes, that’s the nature of the strug- 
gle—and they surely do it with intelligence and spirit. 
There is waste. There is waste in all wars. But I come 
back much more encouraged.’ 

“The same sort of questions and answers are asked and 
given continuously about naval action. Every discussion 
of the possibility of attacking the German naval bases 
ends without a plan. So also with preventing the sub- 
marines from coming out. These subjects have been 
continuously under discussion by a long series of men who 
have studied them; and the total effect so far has been to 
leave them among the impossible tasks. So far as I can 
ascertain all naval men among the Allies agree that these 
things can’t be done. 

“Here again—Is this a merely routine professional 
opinion—a merely traditional opinion—or is it a lack of 
imagination? The question will not down. Yet it is 
impossible to get facts to combat it. What are the limits 
of the practicable? 

‘“‘Mr. Balfour told me yesterday his personal conviction 
about the German colonies, which, he said, he had 
not discussed with his associates in the Cabinet. His 
firm opinion is that they ought not to be returned to the 
Germans, first for the sake of humanity. ‘The na- 
tives—the Africans especially—have been so_ barba- 
rously treated and so immorally that it would be inhuman 
to permit the Germans to rule and degrade them further. 
But Heaven forbid that we should still further enlarge the 
British Empire. Asa practical matter I do not care to do 
that. Besides, we should incur the criticism of fighting 


THE UNITED STATES AT WAR 247 


in order to get more territory, and that was not and is not 
our aim. If the United States will help us, my wish is 
that these German Colonies that we have taken, especially 
in Africa, should be “internationalized.’’ There are 
great difficulties in such a plan, but they are not insuper- 
able if the great Powers of the Allies will agree upon it.’ 
And much more to the same effect. The parts of Asiatic 
Turkey that the British have taken, he thought, might be 
treated in the same way.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE 
UNITED STATES 


I 


AGE now took up a subject which had been near his 
heart for a long time. He believed that one of the 
most serious causes of Anglo-American misunderstanding 
was the fact that the leading statesmen of the two coun- 
tries had never had any personal contact with one another. 
At one time, as this correspondence shows, the Ambassa- 
dor had even hoped that President Wilson himself might 
cross the ocean and make the British people an official 
visit. The proposal, however, was made before the 
European war broke out, the occasion which Page had 
in mind being the dedication of Sulgrave Manor, the old 
English home of the Washington family, as a perpetual 
memorial to the racial bonds and common ideals uniting 
the two countries. The President found it impossible 
to act upon this suggestion and the outbreak of war made 
the likelihood of such a visit still more remote. Page had 
made one unsuccessful attempt to bring the American 
State Department and the British Foreign Office into 
personal contact. At the moment when American irri- 
tation had been most keen over the blockade and the 
blacklist, Page had persuaded the Foreign Office to invite 
to England Mr. Frank L. Polk, at that time Counsellor of 
the Department; the Ambassador believed that a few 
conversations between such an intelligent gentleman 
as Mr. Polk and the British statesmen would smooth 
248 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 249 


out all the points which were then making things so 
difficult. Unfortunately the pressure of work at Wash- 
ington prevented Mr. Polk from accepting Sir Edward 
Grey’s invitation. 

But now a greater necessity for close personal association 
had arisen. The United States had entered the war, and 
this declaration had practically made this country an ally 
of Great Britain and France. The British Government 
wished to send a distinguished commission to the United 
States, for two reasons: first, to show its appreciation of 
the stand which America had taken, and second, to dis- 
cuss plans for cooperation in the common task. Great 
Britain frankly admitted that it had made many mistakes 
in the preceding three years—mistakes naval, military, 
political, and economic; it would welcome an opportunity 
to display these errors to Washington, which might natu- 
rally hope to profit fromthem. Assoonas his country was 
in the war, Page took up this suggestion with the Foreign 
Office. There was of course one man who was preémi- 
nently fitted, by experience, position, and personal quali- 
ties, to head such a commission; on this point there was 
no discussion. Mr. Balfour was now in his seventieth 
year; his activities in British politics dated back to the 
times of Disraeli; his position in Great Britain had become 
as near that of an ‘‘elder statesman”’ as is tolerable under 
the Anglo-Saxon system. By this time Page had estab- 
lished the friendliest possible relations with this distin- 
guished man. Mr. Balfour had become Foreign Secretary 
in December, 1916, in succession to Lord Grey. Greatly 
as Page regretted the resignation of Grey, he was much 
gratified that Mr. Balfour had been selected to succeed 
him. Mr. Balfour’s record for twenty-five years had been 
one of consistent friendliness toward the United States. 
When President Cleveland’s Venezuelan message, in 1896, 


950 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


had precipitated a crisis in the relations of the two coun- 
tries, it was Mr. Balfour’s influence which was especially 
potent in causing Great Britain to modify its attitude and 
to accept the American demand for arbitration. That 
action not only amicably settled the Venezuelan question; 
it marked the beginning of a better feeling between the 
English-speaking countries and laid the basis for that 
policy of benevolent neutrality which Great Britain had 
maintained toward the United States in the Spanish War. 
The excellent spirit which Mr. Balfour had shown at this 
crisis he had manifested on many occasions since. In the 
criticisms of the United States during the Lusitania trou- 
bles Mr. Balfour had never taken part. The era of 
“neutrality ’’ had not ruffled the confidence which he had 
always felt in the United States. During all this time the 
most conspicuous dinner tables of London had rung with 
criticisms of American policy ; the fact was well known, how- 
ever, that Mr. Balfour had never sympathized with these 
reproaches; even when he was not in office, no unfriendly 
word concerning the United States had ever escaped his 
lips. His feeling toward this country was well shown in 
a letter which he wrote Page, in reply to one congratulat- 
ing him on his seventieth birthday. “I have now lived 
a long life,’ said Mr. Balfour, “and most of my energies 
have been expended in political work, but if I have been 
fortunate enough to contribute, even in the smallest de- 
sree, to drawing closer the bonds that unite our two coun- 
tries, [ shall have done something compared with which 
all else that [ may have attempted counts in my eyes as 
nothing.”’ 

Page’s letters and notes contain many references to Mr. 
Balfour’s kindly spirit. On the day following the dis- 
missal of Bernstorff the American Ambassador lunched 
with the Foreign Secretary at No. 4 Carlton Gardens. 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 251 


“Mr. Balfour,” Page reported to Washington, “gave 
expression to the hearty admiration which he entertained 
for the President’s handling of a difficult task. He said 
that never for a moment had he doubted the President’s 
wisdom in the course he was pursuing. He had the pro- 
foundest admiration for the manner in which he had 
promptly broken with Germany after receiving Germany’s 
latest note. Nor had he ever entertained the slightest 
question of the American people’s ready loyalty to their 
Government or to their high ideals. One of his intellec- 
tual pleasures, he added, had long been contemplation of 
the United States as itis and, even more, as its influence in 
the world will broaden. ‘The world,’ said Mr. Balfour, 
‘will more and more turn on the Great Republic as on a 
pivot.’ ” 

Occasionally Mr. Balfour’s discussion of the United 
States would take a more pensive turn. A memorandum 
which Page wrote a few weeks after the above touches 
another point: 

March 27, 1917. 

I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. 
Balfour this afternoon. “It’s sad to me,” said he, “that 
we are so unpopular, so much more unpopular than the 
French, in your country. Why is it? The old school 
books?” 

I doubted the school-book influence. 

“Certainly their influence is not the main cause. It is 
the organized Irish. Then it’s the effect of the very fact 
that the Irish question is not settled. You've had that 
problem at your very door for 300 years. What's the 
matter that you don’t solve it)” ! 

“Yes, yes,’—he saw it. But the plaintive tone of 
such a man asking such a question was significant and 
interesting and—sad. 


952 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Then I told him the curious fact that a British Govern- 
ment made up of twenty individuals, every one of whom 
is most friendly to the United States, will, when they 
act together as a Government, do the most offensive 
things. I mentioned the blacklist; I mentioned certain 
complaints that I then held in my hand—of Americans 
here who are told by the British Government that they 
must turn over to the British Government’s agent in New 
York their American securities which they hold in Amer- 
ica! 

There’s a sort of imperious, arrogant, Tory action that 
comes natural to the English Government, even when not 
natural to the individual Englishman. 


On April 5th, the day before the United States formally 
declared war, Page notified Washington that the British 
Government wished Mr. Balfour to go to the United 
States as the head of a Commission to confer with our 
Government. ‘‘Mr. Balfour is chosen for this mission,” 
Page reported, “not only because he is Secretary of State 
for Foreign Affairs, but because he is personally the most 
distinguished member of the Government.” Page tells the 
story in more detail in a letter to Mr. Polk, at that time 
Counsellor of the State Department. 


To Frank L. Polk 


London, May 3, 1917. 

Dear Mr. Pox: 

Mr. Balfour accurately represents British 
Sieemwion British opinion, and the British attitude. No- 
body who knows him and knows British character and the 
British attitude ever doubted that. I know his whole 
tribe, his home-life, his family connections, his friends; and, 
of course, since he became Foreign Secretary, I’ve come 


THE BALFCUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 253 


to know him intimately. When the question first came 
up here of his going, of course I welcomed it enthusiasti- 
cally. About that time during a two-hour conversation 
he asked me why the British were so unpopular in the 
United States. Among other reasons I told him that our 
official people on both sides steadfastly refused to visit 
one another and to become acquainted. Neither he nor 
Lord Grey, nor Mr. Asquith, nor Mr. Lloyd George, had 
ever been to the United States, nor any other im- 
portant British statesman in recent times, and not a single 
member of the Administration was personally known to a 
single member of the British Government. “Ill go,” 
said he, ‘‘if you are perfectly sure my going will be agree- 
able to the President.’ He himself recalled the fact, 
during one of our several conversations just before he left, 
that you had not come when he and Lord Grey had invited 
you. If you had come, by the way, this era of a better 
understanding would have begun then, and half our old 
troubles would then have been removed. Keeping away 
from one another is the best of all methods of keeping all 
old misunderstandings alive and of making new ones. 

I have no doubt that Mr. Balfour’s visit will cause visits 
of many first-class British statesmen during the war or 
soon afterward. That’s all we need to bring about a per- 
fect understanding. 

You may remember how I tried to get an official report 
about the behaviour of the Benham,! and how, in the ab- 
sence of that, Lord Beresford made a disagreeable speech 
about our Navy in the House of Lords, and how, when 





1The reference is to the attack made in October, 1916, by the German Submarine 
U-53, off Nantucket on several British ships. An erroneous newspaper account 
said that the Benham, an American destroyer, had moved in a way that facilitated 
the operations of the German submarine. This caused great bitterness in Eng- 
land, until Page showed the Admiralty a report from the Navy Department proy- 
ing that the story was false. 


954 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


months later you sent me Roosevelt’s! letter, Lord Beres- 
ford expressed regret to me and said that he would explain 
in another speech. I hadn’t seen the old fellow for a long 
time till a fortnight ago. He greeted me cheerily, and I 
said, “I don’t think [ ought to shake hands with you till 
you retract what you said about our navy.” He insisted 
on my dining with him. He invited Admiral Sims also, 
and those two sailors had a jolly evening of it. Sims’s 
coming has straightened out all that naval misunder- 
standing and more. He is of immense help to them and 
to us. But Pm going to make old Beresford’s life a bur- 
den till he gets up in the Lords and takes that speech back 
—publicly. He’s really all right; but it’s just as well to 
keep the records right. The proceedings of the House of 
Lords are handsomely bound and go into every gentle- 
man’s library. I have seen two centuries of them in 
many a house. 

We can now begin a distinctly New Era in the world’s 
history and in its management if we rise to the occasion: 
there’s not a shadow of doubt about that. And the 
United States can play a part bigger than we have yet 
dreamed of if we prove big enough to lead the British and 
the French instead of listening to Irish and Germans. 
Neither England nor France is a democracy—far from it. 
We can make them both democracies and develop their 
whole people instead of about 10 per cent. of their 
people. We have simply to conduct our affairs by a large 
national policy and not by the complaints of our really 
non-American people. See how a declaration of war has 
cleared the atmosphere! 

We're happy yet, on rations. There are no potatoes. 
We have meatless days. Good wheat meantime is sunk 





!This, of course, is Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 
1917. 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES) 255 


every day. The submarine must be knocked out. Else 
the earth will be ruled by the German bayonet and natural 
living will be verboten. We'll all have to goose-step as the 
Crown Prince orders or—he shot. I see they now propose 
that the United States shall pay the big war indemnity 
in raw materials to the value of hundreds of billions of 
dollars! Not just yet, I guess! 

As we get reports of what you are doing, it’s most cheer- 
ful. I assure you, God has yet made nothing or nobody 
equal to the American people; and I don’t think He ever 
will or can. 

Sincerely yours, 
Wa ter H. Pace. 


One of the curious developments of this Balfour Mission 
was a request from President Wilson that Great Britain 
should take some decisive step for the permanent settle- 
ment of the Irish question. ‘The President,” this mes- 
sage ran, “wishes that, when you next meet the Prime 
Minister, you would explain to him that only one circum- 
stance now appears to stand in the way of perfect 
codperation with Great Britain. All Americans who 
are not immediately connected with Germany by blood 
ties find their one difficulty in the failure of Great Britain 
so far to establish a satisfactory form of self-government in 
Ireland. In the recent debates in Congress on the War 
Resolution, this sentiment was especially manifest. It 
came out in the speeches of those enemies of the Declara- 
tion who were not Irish themselves nor representatives of 
sections in which Irish voters possessed great influence— 
notably members from the Southern States. 

“Tf the American people were once convinced that there 
was a likelihood that the Irish question would soon be 
settled, great enthusiasm and satisfaction would result 


956 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


and it would also strengthen the codperation which we are 
now about to organize between the United States and 
Great Britain. Say this in unofficial terms to Mr. Lloyd 
George, but impress upon him its very great significance. 
If the British Government should act successfully on this 
matter, our American citizens of Irish descent and to a 
creat extent the German sympathizers who have made 
common cause with the Irish, would join hands in the 
ereat common cause.”’ 


To the President 


| London, May 4, 1917. 

DEAR Mr. PRESIDENT: 

It is a remarkable commentary on the insular- 
Sy of the British and on our studied isolation that till Mr. 
Balfour went over not a member of this Government had 
ever met a member of our Administration! Quite half 
our misunderstandings were due to this. If I had the 
making of the laws of the two governments, I’d have a 
statutory requirement that at least one visit a year by 
high official persons should be made either way. We 
should never have had a blacklist, etc., if that had been 
done. When [I tried the quite humble task of getting 
Polk to come and the excuse was made that he couldn’t 
be spared from his desk—Mr. President, I fear we haven't 
half enough responsible official persons in our Govern- 
ment. I should say that no man even of Polk’s rank 
ought to have a desk: just as well give him a mill-stone. 
Even I try not to have a desk: else I'd never get anything 
of importance done; for I find that talks and conferences 
in my office and in the government offices and wherever 
else I can find out things take all my waking hours. The 
Foreign Office here has about five high position men to 
every one in the State Department. God sparing me, 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 257 


I’m going one of these days to prepare a paper for our 
Foreign Affairs Committee on the Waste of Having 
too Few High Grade Men in the Department of State; 
a Plea for Five Assistant Secretaries for Every One Now 
Existing and for Provision for International Visits by 
Them. 

Here’s an ancient and mouldy precedent that needs 
shattering—for the coming of our country into its proper 
station and influence in the world. 

I am sure that Mr. Balfour’s visit has turned out as well 
as I hoped, and my hopes were high. He is one of the 
most interesting men that I’ve ever had the honour 
to know intimately—he and Lord Grey. Mr. Balfour 
is a Tory, of course; and in general I don’t like Tories, 
yet liberal he surely is—a sort of high-toned Scotch demo- 
crat. I have studied him with increasing charm and 
interest. Not infrequently when I am in his office just 
before luncheon he says, ““Come, walk over and we'll 
have lunch with the family.” He’s a bachelor. One 
sister lives with him. Another (Lady Rayleigh, the 
wife of the great chemist and Chancellor of Cambridge 
University) frequently visits him. Either of those 
ladies could rule this Empire. Then there are nieces and 
cousins always about—people of rare cultivation, every 
one of ’em. One of those girls confirmed the story that 
‘Uncle Arthur” one day concluded that the niblick was 
something more than a humble necessity of a bad golfer 
—that it had positive virtues of its own and had suffered 
centuries of neglect. He, therefore, proceeded to play 
with the niblick only, till he proved his case and showed 
that it is a club entitled to the highest respect. 

A fierce old Liberal fighter in Parliamentary warfare, 
who entered politics about the time Mr. Balfour did, 
told me this story the other day. “I’ve watched Balfour 


958 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


for about forty years as a cat watches a rat. I hate his 
party. I hated him till I learned better, for I hated that 
whole Salisbury crowd. They wanted to Cecil every- 
thing. But I'll tell you, Sir, apropos of his visit to your 
country, that in all those years he has never spoken of the 
United States except with high respect and often with deep 
affection. I should have caught him, if he had.” 

I went with him to a college in London one afternoon 
where he delivered a lecture on Dryden, to prove that 
poetry can carry a certain cargo of argument but that 
argument can’t raise the smallest flight of poetry. Dry 
as it sounds, it was as good a literary performance as I 
recall I ever heard. 

At his ‘‘family” luncheon, I’ve found Lord Milner or 
Lord Lansdowne, or some literary man who had come in 
to find out from Lady Rayleigh how to conduct the 
Empire or to write a great book; and the modest old 
chemical Lord sits silent most of the time and now and 
then breaks loose to confound them all with a pat joke. 
This is a vigorous family, these Balfours. There’s one 
of them (a cousin of some sort, I think, of the Foreign 
Secretary) who is a Lord of much of Scotland, about as 
tall as Ben Nevis is high—a giant of aman. One of his 
sons was killed early in the war and one was missing— 
whether dead or not he did not know. Mrs. Page ex- 
pressed her hope one day to the old man that he had had 
news from his missing son. “No, no,” said he simply, 
“and me lady is awearying.”’ 

We've been lucky, Mr. President, in these days of 
immortal horrors and of difficulties between two govern- 
ments that did not know one another—uncommonly lucky, 
in the large chances that politics gives for grave errors, 
to have had two such men in the Foreign Office here as 
Lord Grey and Mr. Balfour. There are men who were 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 259 


mentioned for this post that would have driven us mad— 
or to war with them. I’m afraid I’ve almost outgrown 
my living hero worship. There isn’t worshipful material 
enough lying around in the world to keep a vigorous rev- 
erence in practice. But these two gentlemen by birth 
and culture have at least sometimes seemed of heroic size 
to me. It has meant much to know them well. I shall 
always be grateful to them, for in their quiet, forceful 
way they helped me much to establish right relations 
with these people—which, pray God, I hope to retain 
through whatever new trials we may yet encounter. For 
it will fall to us yet to loose and to free the British, and a 
Briton set free isan American. That's all you can do for 
a man or for a nation of men. 

These Foreign Secretaries are not only men of much 
ereater cultivation than their Prime Ministers but of 
greater moral force. But I’ve come to like Lloyd George 
very much. He’d never deliver a lecture on Dryden, and 
he doesn’t even play a good game of golf; but he has what 
both Lord Grey and Mr. Balfour lack—a touch of genius 
—whatever that is—not the kind that takes infinite pains, 
but the kind that acts as an electric light flashed in the 
dark. He said to me the other day that experts have 
nearly been the death of him. “The Government has 
experts, experts, experts, everywhere. In any depart- 
ment where things are not going well, I have found boards 
and committees and boards of experts. But in one de- 
partment at least [ve found a substitute for them. I let 
twenty experts go and I put in one Man, and things 
began to move at once. Do you know any real Men? 
When you hear of any, won’t you let me know?)”’ 

A little while ago he dined with me, and, after dinner, I 
took him to a corner of the drawing room and delivered 
your message to him about Ireland. ‘God knows, I’m try- 


°60 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


ing,” he replied. “Tell the President that. And tell him 
to talk to Balfour.’’ Presently he broke out—‘‘ Madmen, 
madmen—I never saw any such task,” and he pointed 
across the room to Sir Edward Carson, his First Lord of 
the Admiralty—* Madmen.” “But the President’s right. 
We've got to settle it and we’ve got to settle it now.” Car- 
son and Jellicoe came across the room and sat down with 
us. ‘I’ve been telling the Ambassador, Carson, that 
we've got to settle the Irish question now—in spite of 
you.” 

“Tl tell you something else we’ve got to settle now,” 
said Carson. ‘Else it’llsettleus. That’s the submarines. 
The press and public are working up a calculated and 
concerted attack on Jellicoe and me, and, if they get us, 
they'll get you. It’s an attack on the Government made 
on the Admiralty. Prime Minister,” said this Ulster 
pirate whose civil war didn’t come off only because the 
big war was begun—“ Prime Minister, it may be a fierce 
attack. Get ready for it.” Well, it has been developing 
ever since. But I can’t for the life of me guess at the 
possible results of an English Parliamentary attack on a 
government. It’s like a baseball man watching a game 
of cricket. He can’t see when the player is out or why, or 
what caused it. Of course, the submarine may torpedo 
Lloyd George and his Government. It looks very like 
it may overturn the Admiralty, as Gallipoli did. If this 
public finds out the whole truth, it will demand some- 
body’s head. But I’m only a baseball man; cricket is 
beyond me. | 

But Lloyd George will outlive the war as an active force, 
whatever happen to him in the meantime. He’s too heay- 
ily charged with electricity to stop activity. The war 
has ended a good many careers that seemed to have long 
promise. It is ending more every day. But there is 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 26] 


only one Lloyd George, and, whatever else he lack, he 
doesn’t lack life. 

I heard all the speeches in both Houses on the resolution 
of appreciation of our coming into the war—Bonar Law’s, 
Asquith’s (one of the best), Dillon’s, a Labour man’s, 
and, in the Lords, Curzon’s, Crewe’s, the Archbishop’s 
(who delivered in the course of his remarks a benediction 
on me) and Bryce’s (almost the best of all). It wasn’t 
“oratory,” but it was well said and well meant. They 
know how badly they need help and they do mean to be as 
good to us as their benignant insularity will permit. They 
are changing. I can’t describe the great difference that 
the war has made inthem. They'll almost become docile 
in a little more time. 

And we came in in the nick of time for them—in very 
truth. If we hadn't, their exchange would have gone 
down soon and they know it. I shall never forget the 
afternoon I spent with Mr. Balfour and Mr. Bonar Law 
on that subject. They saw blue ruin without our finan- 
cial help. And now, if we can save them from sub- 
marines, those that know will know how vital our help was. 
Again, the submarine is the great and grave and perhaps 
the only danger now. [If that can be scotched, I believe 
the whole Teutonic military structure would soon tum- 
ble. If not, the Germans may go on as long as they can 
feed their army, allowing their people to starve. 

Of course, you know, we're on rations now—yet we 
suffer no inconvenience on that score. But these queer 
people (they are the most amusing and confusing and con- 
tradictory of all God’s creatures, these English, whose 
possibilities are infinite and whose actualities, in many 
ways, are pitiful)—these queer people are fiercely pur- 
suing food-economy by discussing in the newspapers 
whether a hen consumes more food than she produces, and 


2962 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


whether what dogs eat contains enough human food to 
justify the shooting of every one in the Kingdom. That’s 
the way we are coming down to humble fare. But noth- 
ing can quite starve a people who all live near the sea 
which yields fish enough near shore to feed them waste- 
fully. 

All along this South shore, where I am to-day,! I see the 
Stars and Stripes; and everywhere there is a demand for 
the words and music of the Battle Hymn of the Republic 
and the Star Spangled Banner. 

This our-new-Ally business is bringing me a lot of 
amusing troubles. Theatres offer me boxes, universities 
offer me degrees, hospitals solicit visits from me, clubs 
offer me dinners—I’ll have to get a new private secretary 
or two well-trained to say “No” politely, else I shall not 
have my work done. But all that will presently wear 
away as everything wears away (quickly, too) in the grim 
face of this bloody monster of war which is consuming 
men as a prairie fire consumes blades of grass. There’s 
a family that lives around the corner from this hotel. 
One son is in the trenches, another is in a madhouse from 
shell-shock, a third coming home wounded the other day 
was barely rescued when a torpedo sunk a hospital ship 
and may lose his reason. I suppose I saw one hundred 
men this afternoon on a single mile of beach who had lost 
both legs. Through the wall from my house in London 
is a hospital. A young Texan has been there, whose 
legs are gone at the thighs and one arm at the elbow. 
God pity us for not having organized the world better 
than this! We'll do it, yet, Mr. President—you’ll do it; 
and thank God for you. If we do not organize Europe 





This letter is dated London and was probably begun there. It is evident, how- 
ever, that the latter part was written at Brighton, where the Ambassador was 
taking a brief holiday. 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 263 


and make another such catastrophe impossible, life will 
not be worth being born into except to the few whose 
days happen to fall between recurring devastations of the 


world. 
Yours sincerely, 


WALTER H. Pacer. 


“T hope that the English people,’’ Colonel House wrote 
to Page about this time, “realize how successful Mr. 
Balfour’s visit to America really was. There is no man 
they could have sent who could have done it better. He 
and the President got along marvellously well. The 
three of us dined and spent the evening together and it 
was delightful to see how sympathetic their minds were.”’ 


A letter from Mr. Polk also discloses the impression 
which Mr. Balfour made upon Washington: 


From Frank L. Polk 


Washington, May 25, 1917. 
My pEAR Mr. PAGE: 


I just want to get off a line to catch the pouch. 

You probably know what a wonderful success the Brit- 
ish Mission has been, but I do not think you can realize 
what a deep impression they have made on all of us. Mr. 
Balfour really won the affection of us all, and I do not 
know when I was more sorry to have a man leave than I 
was to have him go last night. He expressed himself 
as having been very much impressed with his reception 
and the way he was treated. He was most fair in all dis- 
cussions, and | think has a better understanding of our 
point of view. I had the good fortune of being present 
at the financial and the diplomatic conferences, and I 
think we all felt that we were dealing with a sympathetic 
friend. 


264 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


He and the President got on tremendously. The best 
evidence of that was the fact that the President went 
up to Congress and sat in the gallery while Mr. Balfour 
addressed the House. This is without precedent. 

The difficult problem of course was the blacklist and 
bunkering agreement, but I think we are by that. The 
important thing now is for the British to make all the con- 
cessions possible in connection with the release of goods 
in Rotterdam and the release of goods in Prize Court, 
though the cases have not been begun. Of course I 
mean cases of merely suspicion rather than where there is 
evidence of wrongdoing. 

The sending of the destroyers and troops abroad is going 
to do a great deal toward impressing our people with the 
fact that we really are in the war. I do not think it is 
thoroughly borne home on the majority yet what a serious 
road we have chosen. 

With warm regards, 

Yours faithfully, 
FRANK L. Pox. 


Mr. Polk’s reference to the blacklist recalls an episode 
which in itself illustrates the changed character of the rela- 
tions that had now been established between the American 
and the British governments. Mr. Balfour discussed 
shipping problems for the most part with Mr. Polk, under 
whose jurisdiction these matters fell. As one of these 
conferences was approaching its end Mr. Balfour slightly 
coughed, uttered an “‘er,’’ and gave other indications that 
he was about to touch upon a ticklish question. 

‘Before I go,” he said, ““there—er—is one subject I 
would—er—like to say something about.” 

Mr. Polk at once grasped what was coming. 

“T know what you have in mind,” said Mr. Polk in his 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 265 


characteristically quick way. “You want us to apply your 
blacklist to neutrals.”’ 

In other words, the British hoped that the United States, 
now that it was in the war, would adopt against South 
America and other offenders those same discriminations 
which this country had so fiercely objected to, when it was 
itself a neutral. 

The British statesman gave Mr. Polk one of his most 
winning smiles and nodded. 

“Mr. Balfour,’ said Mr. Polk, “it took Great Britain 
three years to reach a point where it was prepared to vio- 
late all the laws of blockade. You will find that it will 
take us only two months to become as great criminals as 
you are!”’ 

Mr. Balfour is usually not explosive in his manifesta- 
tions of mirth, but his laughter, in reply to this statement, 
- was almost uproarious. And the State Department was 
as good as its word. It immediately forgot all the elab- 
orate “notes” and “protests’’ which it had been address- 
ing to Great Britain. It became more inexorable than 
Great Britain had ever been in keeping foodstuffs out of 
neutral countries that were contiguous to Germany. Up 
to the time the United States entered the war, Germany, 
in spite of the watchful British fleet, had been obtaining 
large supplies from the United States through Holland, 
Denmark, and the Scandinavian peninsula. But the 
United States now immediately closed these leaks. Inthe 
main this country adopted a policy of “‘rationing’’; that 
is, it would furnish the little nations adjoining Germany 
precisely the amount of food which they needed for their 
own consumption. This policy was one of the chief in- 
fluences in undermining the German people and forcing 
their surrender. The American Government extended 
likewise the blacklist to South America and other coun- 


9°66 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


tries, and, in doing so, it bettered the instruction of Great 
Britain herself. 

Though the whole story of the blockade thus seems fin- 
ally to have ended in a joke, the whole proceeding has its 
serious side. ‘The United States had been posing for three 
years as the champion of neutral rights; the point of view 
of Washington had been that there was a great principle 
at stake. If such a principle were involved, it was cer- 
tainly present in just the same degree after the United 
States became belligerent as in the days when we were 
neutrals. The lofty ideals by which the Administration 
had professed to be guided should have still controlled its 
actions; the mere fact that we, as a belligerent, could ob- 
tain certain advantages would hardly have justified a 
great and high-minded nation in abandoning its principles. 
Yet abandon them we did from the day that we declared 
war. We became just as remorseless in disregarding the 
rights of small states as Great Britain—according to our 
numerous blockade notes—had been. Possibly, there- 
fore, Mr. Balfour’s mirth was not merely sympathetic or 
humorous; it perhaps echoed his discovery that our posi- 
tion for three years had really been nothing but a sham; 
that the State Department had been forcing points in 
which it did not really believe, or in which it did not be- 
lieve when American interests were invclved. At any rate, 
this ending cf our long argument with Great Britain was 
a splendid justification for Page; his contention had al- 
ways been that the preservation of civilization was more 
important than the technicalities of the international 
lawyers. And now the Wilson Administration, by throw- 
ing into the waste basket all the finespun theories with 
which it had been embarrassing the Allied cause since 
August 4, 1914, accepted—and accepted joyously —his 
point of view. 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 267 


II 


One of the first things which Mr. Balfour did, on his 
arrival in Washington, was personally to explain to 
President Wilson about the so-called “secret treaties.”’ 
The “secret treaty” that especially preyed upon Mr. 
Wilson’s mind, and which led to a famous episode at the 
Versailles Conference, was that which had been made with 
Italy in 1915, as consideration for Italy’s participation in 
the war. Mr. Balfour, in telling the President of these 
territorial arrangements with Italy, naturally did not 
criticise his ally, but it was evident that he regarded the 
matter as something about which the United States should 
be informed. 

“This is the sort of thing you have to do when you are 
engaged in a war,” he explained, and then he gave Mr. 
Wilson the details. 

Probably the most important information which Mr. 
Balfour and the French and Italian Commissions brought 
to Washington was the desperate situation of the Allied 
cause. On that point not one of the visiting statesmen 
or military and naval advisers made the slightest attempt 
at concealment. Mr. Balfour emphasized the seriousness 
of the crisis in one of his earliest talks with Mr. McAdoo, 
Secretary of the Treasury. The British statesman was 
especially interested in the financial situation and he there- 
fore took up this matter at an early date with the Treas- 
ury Department. 

“Mr. Balfour,” said Mr. McAdoo, “before we make any 
plans of financial assistance it is absolutely necessary that 
we know precisely where we stand. The all-important 
thing is the question as to how long the war is likely to 
last. If it is only to last a few months, it is evident that 
we need to make very different arrangements than if it is 


968 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


to last several years. Just what must we make provision 
for? Let us assume that the United States goes in with 
all its men and resources—that we dedicate all our money, 
our manufacturing plants, our army, our navy, everything 
we have got, to bringing the war to an end. How long 
will it take?” 

Mr. Balfour replied that it would be necessary to con- 
sult his naval and military advisers before he answered 
that question. He said that he would return in a day or 
two and make an explicit statement. He did so and his 
answer was this: Under these circumstances—that the 
United States should make war to the full limit of its 
power, in men and resources—the war could not be ended 
until the summer or the autumn of 1919. Mr. McAdoo 
put the same question in the same form to the French 
and Italian Missions and obtained precisely the same 
answer. 

Page’s papers show that Mr. Balfour, in the early stages 
of American participation, regarded the financial situa- 
tion as the thing which chiefly threatened the success of 
the Allied cause. So much greater emphasis has been 
laid upon the submarine warfare that this may at first 
seem rather a misreading of Great Britain’s peril. Yet 
the fact is that the high rate of exchange and the dep- 
redatory U-boat represented almost identically the same 
danger. The prospect that so darkened the horizon in 
the spring of 1917 was the possible isolation of Great 
Britain. England’s weakness, as always, consisted in the 
fact that she was an island, that she could not feed herself 
with her own resources and that she had only about six 
weeks’ supply of food ahead of her at any one time. If 
Germany could cut the lines of communication and so 
prevent essential supplies from reaching British ports, 
the population of Great Britain could be starved into 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 269 


surrender in a very brief time, France would be over- 
whelmed, and the triumph of the Prussian cause would 
be complete. That the success of the German submarine 
campaign would accomplish this result was a fact that the 
popular mind readily grasped. What it did not so clearly 
see, however, was that the financial collapse of Great 
Britain would cut these lines of communication quite as 
effectually as the submarine itself. The British were 
practically dependent for their existence upon the food 
brought from the United States, just as the Allied armies 
were largely dependent upon the steel which came from 
the great industrial plants of this country. If Great 
Britain could not find the money with which to purchase 
these supplies, it is quite apparent that they could not be 
shipped. The collapse of British credit therefore would 
have produced the isolation of the British Isles and led to 
a British surrender, just as effectively as would the success 
of the German submarine campaign. 

As soon as Bernstorff was sent home, therefore, and the 
participation of this country in the war became extremely 
probable, Mr. Balfour took up the financial question with 
Page. 


To the President 


NMareh 531917. 

The inquiries which I have made here about financial 
conditions disclose an international situation which is 
most alarming to the financial and industrial outlook of 
the United States. England has not only to pay her own 
war bills, but is obliged to finance her Allies as well. Up 
to the present time she has done these tasks out of her 
own capital. But she cannot continue her present exten- 
sive purchases in the United States without shipping gold 
as payment for them, and there are two reasons why she 


970 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


cannot make large shipments of gold. In the first place, 
both England and France must keep the larger part of the 
gold they have to maintain issues of their paper at par; 
and, in the second place, the German U-boat has made the 
shipping of gold a dangerous procedure even if they had 
it to ship. There is therefore a pressing danger that the 
Franco-American and Anglo-American exchange will be 
greatly disturbed; the inevitable consequence will be that 
orders by all the Allied Governments will be reduced to 
the lowest possible amount and that trans-Atlantic trade 
will practically come to an end. ‘The result of such a 
stoppage will be a panic in the United States. The 
world will therefore be divided into two hemispheres, 
one of them, our own, will have the gold and the commodi- 
ties: the other, Great Britain and Europe, will need these 
commodities, but it will have no money with which to 
pay for them. Moreover, it will have practically no com- 
modities of its own to exchange for them. ‘The financial 
and commercial result will be almost as bad for the United 
States as for Europe. We shall soon reach this condition 
unless we take quick action to prevent it. Great Britain 
and France must have a credit in the United States which 
will be large enough to prevent the collapse of world trade 
and the whole financial structure of Europe. 

If the United States declare war against Germany, the 
greatest help we could give Great Britain and its Allies 
would be such a credit. If we should adopt this policy, 
an excellent plan would be for our Government to make a 
large investment in a Franco-Eritish loan. Another plan 
would be to guarantee such a loan. A great advantage 
would be that all the money would be kept in the United 
States. We could keep on with our trade and increase it, 
till the war ends, and after the war Europe would pur- 
chase food and an enormous supply of materials with 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 271 


which to reequip her peace industries. We should thus 
reap the profit of an uninterrupted and perhaps an en- 
larging trade over a number of years and we should hold 
their securities in payment. 

On the other hand, if we keep nearly all the gold and 
Europe cannot pay for reéstablishing its economic life, 
there may be a world-wide panic for an indefinite period. 

Of course we cannot extend such a credit unless we go 
to war with Germany. But is there no way in which our 
Government might immediately and indirectly help the 
establishment in the United States of a large Franco- 
British credit without violating armed neutrality) I do 
not know enough about our own reserve bank law to form 
an opinion. But these banks would avert such a danger 
if they were able to establish such a credit. Danger for 
us is more real and imminent, I think, than the public on 
either side the Atlantic understands. If it be not averted 
before its manifestations become apparent, it will then be 
too late to save the day. 

The pressure of this approaching crisis, I am certain, 
has gone beyond the ability of the Morgan financial agency 
for the British and French governments. ‘The financial 
necessities of the Allies are too great and urgent for any 
private agency to handle, for every such agency has to 
encounter business rivalries and sectional antegonisms. 

It is not improbable that the only way of maintaining 
our present preéminent trade position and averting a 
panic is by declaring war on Germany. ‘The submarine 
has added the last item to the danger of a financial world 
crash. There is now an urcertainty about our being 
drawn into the war; no more considerable credits can be 
privately placed in the United States. In the meantime 
a collapse may come. 

PAGE. 


972 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Urgent as this message was, it really understated the 
desperate condition of British and Allied finances. That 
the warring powers were extremely pressed for money 
has long been known; but Page’s papers reveal for the first 
time the fact that they were facing the prospect of bank- 
ruptcy itself. ““The whole Allied combination on this 
side the ocean are very much nearer the end of their 
financial resources,’ he wrote in July, “than anybody has 
guessed or imagined. We only can save them. 
The submarines are steadily winning the war. Pershing 
and his army have bucked up the French for the moment. 
But for his coming there was more or less danger of a 
revolution in Paris and of serious defection in the army. 
Everybody here fears that the French will fail before 
another winter of the trenches. Yet—the Germans must 
be still worse off.” 

The matter that was chiefly pressing at the time of the 
Balfour visit was the fact that the British balances in the 
New York banks were in a serious condition. It should 
always be remembered, however, that Great Britain was 
financing not only herself, but her Allies, and that the 
difficult condition in which she now found herself was 
caused by the not too considerate demands of the nations 
with which she was allied in the war. Thus by April 6, 
1917, Great Britain had overdrawn her account with J. P. 
Morgan to the extent of $400,000,000 and had no cash 
available with which to meet this overdraft. This obli- 
gation had been incurred in the purchase of supplies, both 
for Great Britain and the allied governments; and se- 
curities, largely British owned stocks and bonds, had been 
deposited to protect the bankers. The money was now 
coming due; if the obligations were not met, the credit of 
Great Britain in this country would reach the vanishing 
point. Though at first there was a slight misunder- 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 273 


standing about this matter, the American Government 
finally paid this over-draft out of the proceeds of the first 
Liberty Loan. This act saved the credit of the allied 
countries; it was, of course, only the beginning of the 
financial support that America brought to the allied cause; 
the advances that were afterward furnished from the 
American Treasury made possible the purchases of food 
and supplies in enormous quantities. The first danger 
that threatened, the isolation and starvation of Great 
Britain, was therefore overcome. It was the joint prod- 
uct of Page’s work in London and that of the Balfour 
Commission in the United States. 


Til 


Until these financial arrangements had been made 
there was no certainty that the supplies which were 
so essential to victory would ever leave the United States; 
this obstruction at the source had now been removed. 
But the greater difficulty still remained. The German 
submarines were lying off the waters south and west of 
Ireland ready to sink the supply ships as soon as they en- 
tered the prohibited zone. Mr. Balfour and his associates 
were working also on this problem in Washington; and, 
at the same time, Page and Admiral Sims and the British 
Admiralty were bending all their energies in London to 
obtain immediate cooperation. 

A remark which Mr. Balfour afterward made to Admiral 
Sims shows the frightful nature of the problem which was 
confronting Great Britain at that time. 

“That was a terrible week we spent at sea in that 
voyage to the United States,’ Mr. Balfour said. ‘We knew 
that the German submarine campaign was succeeding. 
Their submarines were destroying our shipping and we 


974. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


had no means of preventing it. I could not help thinking 
that we were facing the defeat of Great Britain.”’ 

Page’s papers show that as early as February 25th he 
understood in a general way the disheartening propor- 
tions of the German success. “It is a momentous crisis,” 
he wrote at that time. ‘The submarines are destroying 
shipping at an appalling rate.” Yet it was not until 
Admiral Sims arrived in London, on April 9th, that the 
Ambassador learned all the details. In sending the Ad- 
miral to England the Navy Department had acted on an 
earnest recommendation from Page. The fact that the 
American Navy was inadequately represented in the 
British capital had long been a matter of embarrassment 
to him. The ability and personal qualifications of our 
attachés had been unquestioned; but none of them during 
the war had been men of high rank, and this in itself 
proved to be a constant impediment to their success. 
While America was represented by Commanders, Japan, 
Italy, and France had all sent Admirals to London. 
Page’s repeated requests for an American Admiral had so 
far met with no response, but the probability that this 
country would become involved in the war now gave new 
point to his representations. In the latter part of March, 
Page renewed his request in still more urgent form, and 
this time the President and the Navy Department re- 
sponded favourably. The result was that, on April 9th, 
three days after the American declaration of war, Ad- 
miral Sims and his flag-lieutenant, Commander Babcock, 
presented themselves at the American Embassy. There 
was litle in the appearance of these men to suggest a vio- 
lent naval demonstration against Germany. Both wore 
civilian dress, their instructions having commanded them 
not to bring uniforms; both were travelling under assumed 
names, and both had no more definite orders than to in- 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 275 


vestigate the naval situation and cable the results to 
Washington. In spite of these attempts at secrecy, the 
British had learned that Admiral Sims was on the way; 
they rejoiced not only in this fact, but in the fact that 
Sims had been chosen, for there was no American naval 
officer whose professional reputation stood so high in the 
British Navy or who was so personally acceptable to 
British officialdom and the British public. The Admiralty 
therefore met Admiral Sims at Liverpool, brought him 
to London in a special train, and, a few hours after his 
arrival, gave him the innermost secrets on the submarine 
situation—secrets which were so dangerous that not all the 
members of the British Cabinet had been let into them. 
Page welcomed Admiral Sims with a cordiality which 
that experienced sea veteran still gratefully remembers. 
He at once turned over to him two rooms in the Embassy. 
“You can have everything we've got,” the Ambassador 
said. “If necessary to give you room, we ll turn the whole 
Embassy force out into the street.”” The two men had 
not previously met, but in an instant they became close 
friends. A common sympathy and a common enthusiasm 
were greatly needed at that crisis. As soon as Admiral 
Sims had finished his interview with Admiral Jellicoe, he 
immediately sought out the Ambassador and laid all the 
facts before him. Germany was winning the war. Great 
Britain had only six weeks’ food supply on hand, and the 
submarines were sinking the ships at a rate which, unless 
the depredations should be checked, meant an early and 
unconditional surrender of the British Empire. Only the 
help of the United States could prevent this calamity. 
Page, of course, was aghast: the facts and figures Ad- 
miral Sims gave him disclosed a situation which was even 
more desperate than he had imagined. He advised the 
Admiral to cable the whole story immediately to Wash- 


276 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


ington. Admiral Sims at first had some difficulty in ob- 
taining the Admiralty’s consent to doing this, and the 
reason was the one with which Page had long been familiar 
the fear, altogether too justified, that the news would 
‘leak’? out of Washington. Of course there was no sus- 
picion in British naval circles of the good faith of the 
Washington officials, but important facts had been sent 
so many times under the seal of the strictest secrecy and 
had then found their way into the newspapers that there 
was a deep distrust of American discretion. Certainly 
no greater damage could have been done the allied cause 
at that time than to have the Germans learn how success- 
fully their submarine campaign was progressing. The 
question was referred to the Imperial War Council and 
its consent obtained. The report, however, was sent to 
the Navy Department in the British naval code, and de- 
coded in the British Embassy in Washington. 

Admiral Sims’s message gave all the facts about the 
submarine situation, and concluded with the recommen- 
dation that the United States should assemble all floating 
craft that could be used in the anti-submarine warfare, 
destroyers, tugs, yachts, light cruisers, and similar vessels, 
and send them immediately to Queenstown, where they 
would do valuable service in convoying merchant vessels 
and destroying the U-boats. At that time the American 
Navy had between fifty and sixty destroyers that were 
patrolling the American coast; these could have been des- 
patched, almost immediately, to the scene of operations: 
but, in response to this request, the Department sent six 
to Queentown. 

The next few months were very unhappy ones for 
Admiral Sims. He was the representative in London of 
one of the world’s greatest naval powers, participating in 
the greatest war that had ever enlisted its energies, yet his 





THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 277 


constant appeals for warships elicited the most inade- 
quate response, his well-reasoned recommendations for 
meeting the crisis were frequently unanswered and at other 
times were met with counter-proposals so childish that 
they seemed almost to have originated in the brains of 
newspaper amateurs, and his urgent pictures of a civiliza- 
tion rapidly going to wreck were apparently looked upon 
with suspicion as the utterances of a man who had been 
completely led astray by British guile. To give a fair 
idea of Washington's neglect during this period it is only 
necessary to point out that, for four months, Admiral 
Sims occupied the two rooms in the Embassy directly 
above Page’s, with Commander Babcock as his only aid. 
Sims’s repeated requests to Secretary Daniels for an 
additional staff went unheeded. Had it not been for the 
Admiral’s constant daily association with Page and the 
comfort and encouragement which the Ambassador gave 
him, this experience would have been almost unbearable. 
In the latter part of April, the Admiral’s appeals to Wash- 
ington having apparently fallen on deaf ears, he asked 
Page to second his efforts. ‘The Admiral and Commander 
Babcock wrote another message, and drove in a motor 
car to Brighton, where Page was taking a little rest. The 
Admiral did not know just how strong a statement the 
Ambassador would care to sponsor, and so he did not make 
this representation as emphatic as the judgment of both 
men would have preferred. 

The Admiral handed Page the paper, saying that he 
had prepared it with the hope that the Ambassador would 
sign it and send it directly to President Wilson. 

“It is quite apparent,’ Admiral Sims said, “that the 
Department doesn’t believe what I have been saying. 
Or they don’t believe what the British are saying. They 
think that England is exaggerating the peril for reasons 


978 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


of its own. They think I am hopelessly pro-British and 
that I am being used. But if you'll take it up directly 
with the President, then they may be convinced.” 

Page put on his spectacles, took the paper, and read it 
through. Then, looking over the rim of his glasses in his 
characteristic way, he leaned toward Admiral Sims and 
said: 

‘Admiral, it isn’t half strong enough! I think I can 
write a better despatch than that, myself! At least let 
me try.” 

He immediately took a pen and paper and in a few 
minutes he had written his own version which he gave 
the Admiral to read. The latter was delighted with it 
and in a brief time it was on its way to Washington. 


From: Ambassador Page. 
To: Secretary of State. 
Sent: 27 April, 1917. 


Very confidential for Secretary and President 


There is reason for the greatest alarm about the issue 
of the war caused by the increasing success of the German 
submarines. I have it from official sources that during 
the week ending 22nd April, 88 ships of 237,000 tons, allied 
and neutral, were lost. The number of vessels unsuccess- 
fully attacked indicated a great increase in the number 
of submarines in action. 

This means practically a million tons lost every month 
till the shorter days of autumn come. By that time the 
sea will be about clear of shipping. Most of the ships are 
sunk to the westward and southward of Ireland. The 
British have in that area every available anti-submarine 
craft, but their force is so insufficient that they hardly 
discourage the submarines. 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 279 


The British transport of troops and supplies is already 
strained to the utmost, and the maintenance of the armies 
in the field is threatened. . There is food enough here to 
last the civil population only not more than six weeks or 
two months. 

Whatever help the United States may render at any 
time in the future, or in any theatre of the war, our help 
is now more seriously needed in this submarine area for 
the sake of all the Allies than it can ever be needed again, 
or anywhere else. 

After talking over this critical situation with the Prime 
Minister and other members of the Government, I can- 
not refrain from most strongly recommending the immedi- 
ate sending over of every destroyer and all other craft that 
can be of anti-submarine use. This seems to me the 
sharpest crisis of the war, and the most dangerous situa- 
tion for the Allies that has arisen or could arise. 

If enough submarines can be destroyed in the next two 
or three months, the war will be won, and if we can con- 
tribute effective help immediately, 1t will be won directly 
by our aid. I[ cannot exaggerate the pressing and increas- 
ing danger of this situation. Thirty or more destroyers 
and other similar craft sent by us immediately would very 
likely be decisive. 

There is no time to be lost. 

(Signed) PaGE. 


This cablegram had a certain effect. The reply came 
from Washington that “eventually” thirty-six destroyers 
would be sent. 


Page’s letters of this period are full of the same sub- 
ject. 


980 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


To the President 


London, May 4, 1917. 
DEAR Mr. PRESIDENT: 

The submarines have become a very grave danger. 
The loss of British and allied tonnage increases with the 
longer and brighter days—as I telegraphed you, 237,000 
tons last week; and the worst of it is, the British are not 
destroying them. The Admiralty publishes a weekly re- 
port which, though true, is not the whole truth. It is 
known in official circles here that the Germans are turning 
out at least two a week—some say three; and the British 
are not destroying them as fast as new ones are turned 
out. If merely the present situation continue, the war 
will pretty soon become a contest of endurance under 
hunger, with an increasing proportion of starvation. Ger- 
many is yet much the worse off, but it will be easily 
possible for Great Britain to suffer to the danger point 
next winter or earlier unless some decided change be 
wrought in this situation. | 

The greatest help, I hope, can come from us—our de- 
stroyers and similar armed craft—provided we can send 
enough of them quickly. The area to be watched is so 
big that many submarine hunters are needed. Early in 
the war the submarines worked near shore. There are very 
many more of them now and their range is one hundred 
miles, or even two hundred, at sea. 

The public is becoming very restive with its half- 
information, and it is more and more loudly demanding 
all the facts. There are already angry threats to change 
the personnel of the Admiralty; there is even talk of turn- 
ing out the Government. “‘We must have results, we 
must have results.” I hear confidentially that Jellicoe 
has threatened to resign unless the Salonica expedition is 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 281 


brought back: to feed and equip that force requires too 
many ships. 

And there are other troubles impending. Norway has 
lost so many of her ships that she dare not send what are 
left to sea. Unarmed they'll all perish. If she arm them, 
Germany will declare war against her. There is a plan 
on foot for the British to charter these Norwegian ships 
and to arm them, taking the risk of German war against 
Norway. If war come (as it is expected) England must 
then defend Norway the best she can. And then England 
may ask for our big ships to help in these waters. All this 
is yet in the future, but possibly not far in the future. 

For the present the only anti-submarine help is the help 
we may be able to give to patrol the wide area off Ireland. 
If we had one hundred destroyers to send, the job there 
could, I am told, be quickly done. A third of that num- 
ber will help mightily. At the present rate of destruction 
more than four million tons will be sunk before the summer 
is gone. 

Such is this dire submarine danger. The English 
thought that they controlled the sea; the Germans, that 
they were invincible on land. Each side is losing where 
it thought itself strongest. 

Admiral Sims is of the greatest help imaginable. Of 
course, I gave him an office in one of our Embassy build- 
ings, and the Admiralty has given him an office also with 
them. He spends much of his time there, and they have 
opened all doors and all desks and drawers to him. He 
strikes me (and the English so regard him) as a man of 
admirable judgment—unexcitable and indefatigable. I 
hope we'll soon send a general over, to whom the War 
Department will act similarly. Hoover, too, must have a 
good man here as, I dare say, he has already made known. 
These will cover the Navy, the Army, Food, and Shipping. 


282 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Perhaps a Censor and an Intelligence (Secret Service) 
group ought to come. I mean these for permanent—at 
least indefinite—service. Exchange visits by a Con- 
sressional Committee (such as the French and British 
make) and by high official persons such as members of 
your Cabinet (such also as the French and British make)— 
you will have got ideas about these from Mr. Balfour. 
W. H. P. 


In the latter part of June Admiral Sims went to Queens- 
town. Admiral Bayly, who directed the operation of the 
anti-submarine forces there, had gone away for a brief 
rest, and Admiral Sims had taken over the command of 
both the British and American forces at that point. This 
experience gave Admiral Sims a first-hand picture of a 
really deplorable situation. The crisis was so desperate 
that he made another appeal to Page. 


From Admiral William S. Sims 


Admiralty House, Queenstown, 


June 25, 1917. 
My pEAR Mr. PAGE: 


I enclose herewith a letter on the submarine situation.! 

I think I have made it plain therein that the Allies are 
losing the war; that it will be already lost when the loss 
of shipping reaches the point where fully adequate sup- 
plies cannot be maintained on the various battle fronts. 

I cannot understand why our Government should hesi- 
tate to send the necessary anti-submarine craft to this side. 

There are at least seventeen more destroyers employed 
on our Atlantic coast, where there is no war, not to mention 
numerous other very useful anti-submarine craft, includ- 
ing sea-going tugs, etc. 

1This was a long document describing conditions in great detail. 





THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 283 


Can you not do something to bring our Government to 
an understanding of how very serious the situation is? 

Would it not be well to send another telegram to Mr. 
Lansing and the President, and also send them the en- 
closed correspondence? 

I am sending this by mail because I may be somewhat 
delayed in returning to London. 

Very sincerely yours, 


Wo. S. Sms. 
Page immediately acted on this suggestion. 


Most confidential for the Secretary of State and 
President only 


Sims sends me by special messenger from Queenstown 
the most alarming reports of the submarine situation 
which are confirmed by the Admiralty here. He says that 
the war will be won or lost in this submarine zone within 
afew months. ‘Time is of the essence of the problem, and 
anti-submarine craft which cannot be assembled in the 
submarine zone almost immediately may come too late. 
There is, therefore, a possibility that this war may become 
a war between Germany and the United States alone. 
Help is far more urgently and quickly needed in this sub- 
marine zone than anywhere else in the whole war area. 

PAGE. 


The United States had now been in the war for three 
months and only twenty-eight of the sixty destroyers which 
were available had been sent into the field. Yet this 
latest message of Page produced no effect, and, when 
Admiral Sims returned from Queenstown, the two men, 
almost in despair, consulted as to the step which they 
should take next. What was the matter? Was it that 


°84. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Washington did not care to get into the naval war with its 
full strength, or was it that it simply refused to believe 
the representations of its Admiral and its Ambassador? 
Admiral Sims and Page went over the whole situation 
and came to the conclusion that Washington regarded 
them both as so pro-British that their reports were subject 
to suspicion. Just as Page had found that the State 
Department, and its “trade advisers,” had believed that 
the British were using the blockade as a means of de- 
stroying American trade for the benefit of Britain, so now 
he believed that Mr. Daniels and Admiral Benson, the 
Chief of Naval Operations, evidently thought that Great 
Britain was attempting to lure American warships into 
European waters, to undergo the risk of protecting British 
commerce, while British warships were kept safely in 
harbour. Page suggested that there was now only one 
thing left to do, and that was to request the British 
Government itself to make a statement to President 
Wilson that would substantiate his own messages. 

‘Whatever else they think of the British in Washing- 
ton,” he said, “they know one thing—and that is that a 
British statesman like Mr. Balfour will not lie.” 

Mr. Balfour by this time had returned from America. 
The fact that he had established these splendid personal 
relations with Mr. Wilson, and that he had impressed the 
American public so deeply with his sincerity and fine 
purpose, made him especially valuable for this particular 
appeal. Page and Admiral Sims therefore went to the 
Foreign Office and laid all the facts before him. Their 
own statements, Page informed the Foreign Secretary, 
were evidently regarded as hysterical and biased by 
an unreasoning friendliness to Great Britain. If Mr. 
Balfour would say the same things over his own signature, 
then they would not be disbelieved. 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 285 


Mr. Balfour gladly consented. He called in Admiral 
Jellicoe and asked him to draft a despatch, so that all the 
technical facts would be completely accurate. He also 
consulted with Sir Edward Carson, the First Lord of the 
Admiralty. Then Mr. Balfour put the document in its 
final shape and signed it. It was as follows: 


Mr. Balfour to the President 


June 30, 1917. 

The forces at present at the disposal of the British Ad- 
miralty are not adequate to protect shipping from subma- 
rine attack in the danger zone round the British Islands. 
Consequently shipping is being sunk at a greater rate than 
it can be replaced by new tonnage of British origin. 

The time will come when, if the present rate of loss 
continues, the available shipping, apart from American 
contribution, will be insufficient to bring to this country 
sufficient foodstuffs and other essentials, including oil fuel. 
The situation in regard to our Allies, France, and Italy, is 
much the same. 

Consequently, it is absolutely necessary to add to our 
forces as a first step, pending the adoption or completion 
of measures which will, it is hoped, eventually lead to the 
destruction of enemy submarines at a rate sufficient to 
ensure safety of our sea communications. 

The United States is the only allied country in a posi- 
tion to help. The pressing need is for armed small craft 
of every kind available in the area where commerce con- 
centrates near the British and French coasts. Destroy- 
ers, submarines, gunboats, yachts, trawlers, and tugs 
would all give invaluable help, and if sent in sufficient 
numbers would undoubtedly save a situation which is 
manifestly critical. But they are required now and in 
as great numbers as possible. There is no time for delay. 


286 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


The present method of submarine attack is almost cn- 
tirely by torpedo with the submarine submerged. ‘The 
gun defense of merchant ships keeps the submarine below 
the surface but does no more; offensively against a sub- 
merged submarine it is useless, and the large majority of 
the ships torpedoed never see the attacking submarine 
until the torpedo has hit the ship.! 

The present remedy is, therefore, to prevent the sub- 
marine from using its periscope for fear of attack by bomb 
or ram from small craft, and this method of defense for the 
shipping and offense against the submarine requires small 
craft in very large numbers. 

The introduction of the convoy system, provided there 
are sufficient destroyers to form an adequate screen to the 
convoy, will, it is hoped, minimize losses when it is work- 
ing, and the provision of new offensive measures is pro- 
eressing; but for the next few months there is only one 
safeguard, viz., the immediate addition to patrols of 
every small vessel that can possibly be sent to European 
waters. 


Page, moreover, kept up his own appeal: 


To the President 
July 5th. 


Strictly confidential to the President and the Secretary 


The British Cabinet is engaging in a threatening contro- 
versy about the attitude which they should take toward 
the submarine peril. There is a faction in the Admiralty 
which possesses the indisputable facts and which takes 





1The Navy Department had taken the position that arming merchantmen was 
the best protection against the submarine. This statement was intended to re- 


fute this belief. 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 287 


a very disheartening view of the situation. This group 
insists that the Cabinet should make a confession at least 
to us of the full extent of the danger and that it should 
give more information to the public. The public does 
not feel great alarm simply because it has been kept in 
too great ignorance. But the political faction is so far the 
stronger. It attempts to minimize the facts, and, prob- 
ably for political reasons, it refuses to give these discourag- 
ing facts wide publicity. The politicians urge that it is nec- 
essary to conceal the full facts from the Germans. They 
also see great danger in throwing the public into a panic. 

Mr. Lloyd George is always optimistic and he is too 
much inclined to yield his judgment to political motives. 
In his recent address in Glasgow he gave the public a 
comforting impression of the situation. But the facts do 
not warrant the impression which he gave. 

This dispute among the political factions is most un- 
fortunate and it may cause an explosion of public feeling 
at any time. Changes in the Cabinet may come in con- 
sequence. If the British public knew all the facts or if 
the American people knew them, the present British Gov- 
ernment would probably fall. It is therefore not only the 
submarine situation which is full of danger. The political 
situation is in a dangerous state also. 

PAGE. 


To Arthur W. Page 


Wilsford Manor, Salisbury, 


July 8, 1917. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 


Since admirals and generals began to come from home, 
they and the war have taken my time so completely, day 
and night, that I haven’t lately written you many things 
that I should like to tell you. Tl try here—a house of a 


988 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


friend of ours where the only other guest besides your 
mother and me is Edward Grey. This is the first time 
I’ve seen him since he left office. Let me take certain big 
subjects in order and come to smaller things later: 

1. The German submarines are succeeding to a degree 
that the public knows nothing about. These two things 
are true: (a) The Germans are building submarines faster 
than the English sink them. In this way, therefore, they 
are steadily gaining. (b) The submarines are sinking 
freight ships faster than freight ships are being built by 
the whole world. In this way, too, then, the Germans are 
succeeding. Now if this goes on long enough, the Allies’ 
game is up. For instance, they have lately sunk so 
many fuel oil ships, that this country may very soon be in 
a perilous condition—even the Grand Fleet may not have 
enough fuel. Of course the chance is that oil ships will 
not continue to fall victims to the U-boats and we shall 
get enough through to replenish the stock. But this il- 
lustrates the danger, and it is a very grave danger. 

The best remedy so far worked out is the destroyer. 
The submarines avoid destroyers and they sink very, 
very few ships that are convoyed. If we had destroyers 
enough to patrol the whole approach (for, say, 250 miles) 
to England, the safety of the sea would be very greatly 
increased; and if we had enough to patrol and to convoy 
every ship going and coming, the damage would be re- 
duced to a minimum. The Admiral and I are trying our 
best to get our Government to send over 500 improvised 
destroyers—yachts, ocean-going tugs—any kind of swift 
craft that can be armed. Five hundred such little boats 
might end the war in a few months; for the Germans are 
keeping the spirit of their people and of their army up 
by their submarine success. If that success were stopped 
they’d have no other cry half so effective. If they could 





THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 289 


see this in Washington as we see it, they’d do it and do it 
not halfway but with a vengeance. If they don’t do it, 
the war may be indefinitely prolonged and a wholly satis- 
factory peace may never be made. The submarine is 
the most formidable thing the war has produced—by far 
—and it gives the German the only earthly chance he has 
to win. And he may substantially win by it yet. That’s 
what the British conceal. In fact, half of them do not see 
it or believe it. But nothing is truer, or plainer. One 
hundred thousand submarine chasers next year may be 
worth far less than 500 would be worth now, for next year 
see how few ships may be left! The mere arming of ships 
is not enough. Nearly all that are sunk are armed. The 
submarine now carries a little periscope and a big one, 
each painted the colour of the sea. You can’t see a little 
periscope except in an ocean as smooth as glass. It isn’t 
bigger than a coffee cup. The submarine thus sinks its 
victims without ever emerging or ever being seen. As 
things now stand, the Germans are winning the war, and 
they are winning it on the sea; that’s the queer and the 
most discouraging fact. My own opinion is that all 
the facts ought to be published to all the world. Let the 
Germans get all the joy they can out of the confession. 
No matter, if the Government and the people of the 
United States knew all the facts, we’d have 1,000 impro- 
vised destroyers (yachts, tugs, etc., etc.) armed and over 
here very quickly. Then the tide would turn. 

Then there’d be nothing to fear in the long run. For 
the military authorities all agree that the German Army is 
inferior to the British and French and will be whipped. 
That may take a long time yet; but of the result nobody 
who knows seems to have any doubt—unless the French 
get tired and stop. They have periods of great war weari- 
ness and there is real danger that they may quit and 


990 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


make a separate peace. General Pershing’s presence has 
made the situation safe for the moment. But in a little 
while something else spectacular and hopeful may be re- 
quired to keep them in line. 

Such is an accurate picture of the war as it is now, and 
it is a dangerous situation. 

2. The next grave danger is financial. The European 
Allies have so bled the English for money that the English 
would by this time probably have been on a paper money 
basis (and of course all the Allies as well) if we had not 
come to their financial aid. And we've got to keep our 
financial aid going to them to prevent this disastrous re- 
sult. That wouldn’t at once end the war, if they had all 
abandoned specie payments; but it would be a frightfully 
severe blow and it might later bring defeat. That is a real 
danger. And the Government at Washington, I fear, 
does not know the full extent of the danger. They think 
that the English are disposed to lie down on them. They 
don’t realize the cost of the war. This Government has 
bared all this vast skeleton to me; but I fear that Wash- 
ington imagines that part of it is a deliberate scare. It’s 
a very real danger. 

Now, certain detached items: 

Sims is the idol of the British Admiralty and he is doing 
his job just as well as any man could with the tools and 
the chance that he has. He has made the very best of the 
chance and he has completely won the confidence and 
admiration of this side of the world. 

Pershing made an admirable impression here, and in 
France he has simply set them wild with joy. His com- 
ing and his little army have been worth what a real army 
will be worth later. It is well he came to keep the French 
in line. 

The army of doctors and nurses have had a similar effect. 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 291 


Even the New England saw-mill units have caused 
afuror of enthusiasm. They came with absolute Yankee 
completeness of organization—with duplicate parts of all 
their machinery, tents, cooks, pots, and pans, and every- 
thing ship-shape. The only question they asked was: 
‘Say, where the hell are them trees you want sawed up)” 
That’s the way to do a job! Yankee stock is made high 
here by such things as that. 

Were getting a crowd of Yankee lecturers on the 
United States to go up and down this Kingdom. There’s 
the greatest imaginable curiosity to hear about the United 
States in all kinds of society from munition workers 
to universities. I got the British Government to write 
Buttrick! to come as its guest, and the Rockefeller Boards 
rose to the occasion. He'll probably be along presently. 
If he hasn’t already sailed when you get this, see him and 
tell him to make arrangements to have pictures sent over 
to him to illustrate his lectures. Who else could come 
to do this sort of a job? 

I am myself busier than I have ever been. The kind 
of work the Embassy now has to do is very different from 
the work of the days of neutrality. It continues to in- 
crease—especially the work that I have to do myself. 
But it’s all pleasant now. We are trying to help and no 
longer to hinder. To save my life I don’t see how the 
Washington crowd can look at themselves in a mirror and 
keep their faces straight. Yesterday they were bent on 
sending everything into European neutral states. The 
foundations of civilization would give way if neutral trade 
were interfered with. Now, nothing must go in except on 
a ration basis. Yesterday it must ,.be a peace without 
victory. Now it must be a complete victory, every man 


iPr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education Board, who was 
sent at this time to deliver lectures throughout Great Britain on the United States. 


9902 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


and every dollar thrown in, else no peace is worth having. 
I don’t complain. I only rejoice. But I’m glad that 
kind of a rapid change is not a part of my record. The 
German was the same beast yesterday that he is to-day; 
and’ it makes a simple-minded, straight-minded man 
like me wonder which attitude was the (or is the) attitude 
of real conviction. But this doesn’t bother me now as a 
real problem—only as a speculation. What we call His- 
tory will, I presume, in time work this out. But History 
is often a kind of lie. But never mind that. The only 
duty of mankind now is to win. Other things can wait. 

I walked over to Stonehenge and back (about six miles) 
with Lord Grey (Sir Edward, you know) and we, like every- 
body else, fell to talking about when the war may end. 
We know as well as anybody and no better than anybody 
else. I have very different moods about it—no convic- 
tions. It seems to me to depend, as things now are, 
more on the submarines than on anything else. If we 
could effectually discourage them so that the Germans 
would have to withdraw them and could no more keep 
up the spirit of their people by stories of the imminent 
starvation of England, I have a feeling that the hunger 
and the war weariness of the German people would lead 
them to force an end. But, the more they are called on 
to suffer the more patriotic do they think themselves and 
they may go on till they drop dead in their tracks. 

What I am really afraid of is that the Germans may, 
before winter, offer all that the Western Allies most want 
—the restoration of Belgium and France, the return of 
Alsace-Lorraine, etc., in the West and the surrender of 
the Colonies—provided Austria is not dismembered. That 
would virtually leave them the chance to work out their 
Middle Europe scheme and ultimately there’d probably 
have to be another war over that question. That’s the 


THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES 293 


real eventuality to be feared—a German defeat in the 
West but a German victory in the Southeast. Everybody 
in Europe is so war weary that such a plan may succeed. 

On the other hand, what Hoover and Northcliffe fear 
may come true—that the Germans are going to keep up 
the struggle for years—till their armies are practically 
obliterated, as Lee’s army was. Ifthe Allies were actually 
to kill (mot merely wound, but actually kill) 5,000 Ger- 
mans a day for 300 days a year, it would take about 
four years to obliterate the whole German Army. There 
is the bare possibility, therefore, of a long struggle yet. 
But I can’t believe it. My dominant mood these days is 
an end within a very few months after the submarines are 
knocked out. Send over, therefore, 1,000 improvised 
destroyers the next two months, and I’ll promise peace 
by Christmas. Otherwise I can make no promises. 
That’s all that Lord Grey and I know, and surely we are 
two wise men. What, therefore, is the use in writing 
any more about this? 

The chief necessity that grows upon me is that all the 
facts must be brought out that show the kinship in blood 
and ideals of the two great English-speaking nations. 
We were actually coming to believe ourselves that we were 
part German and Slovene and Pole and What-not, instead 
of essentially being Scotch and English. Hence the un- 
speakable impudence of your German who spoke of elimi- 
nating the Anglo-Saxon element from American life! The 
truth should be forcibly and convincingly told and re- 
peated to the end of the chapter, and our national life 
should proceed on its natural historic lines, with its 
proper historic outlook and background. We can do 
something to bring this about. 

Affectionately, 
W. H. P. 


994. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


The labour of getting the American Navy into the war 
was evidently at first a difficult one, but the determination 
of Page and Admiral Sims triumphed, and, by August and 
September, our energies were fully engaged. And the 
American Navy made a record that will stand everlast- 
ingly to its glory. Without its help the German sub- 
marines could never have been overcome. 


GU ACP. Rane Lely 
PAGE—THE MAN 


HE entrance of America into the war, followed 

- by the successful promotion of the Balfour visit, 
brought a period of quiet into Page’s life. These events 
represented for him a personal triumph; there were many 
things still to be done, it is true, and Page, as always, was 
active in advancing the interests that were nearest his 
heart; yet the mighty relief that followed the American 
declaration was the kind that one experiences after ac- 
complishing the greatest task of a lifetime. Page’s letters 
have contained many references to the sense of moral 
isolation which his country’s policy had forced upon him; 
he probably exaggerated his feeling that there was a 
tendency to avoid him; this was merely a reflection 
of his own inclination to keep away from all but the 
official people. He now had more leisure and certainly 
more interest in cultivating the friends that he had 
made in Great Britain. For the fact is that, during 
all these engrossing years, Page had been more than 
an Ambassador; by the time the United States entered 
the war he had attained an assured personal position 
in the life of the British capital. He had long since 
demonstrated his qualifications for a post, which, in the 
distinction of the men who have occupied it, has few 
parallels in diplomacy. The scholarly Lowell, the courtly 
Bayard, the companionable Hay, the ever-humorous 
Choate, had set a standard for American Ambassadors 
which had made the place a difficult one for their suc- 

295 


% 


29906 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


cessors. Though Page had characteristics In common 
with all these men, his personality had its own distinctive 
tang; and it was something new to the political and 
social life of London. And the British capital, which is 
extremely exacting and even merciless in its demands upon 
its important personages, had found it vastly entertain- 
ing. ‘I didn’t know there could be anything so Ameri- 
can as Page except Mark Twain,” a British literary man 
once remarked; and it was probably this strong American 
quality, this directness and even breeziness of speech 
and of method, this absence of affectation, this almost 
openly expressed contempt for finesse and even for tradi- 
tion, combined with those other traits which we lke to 
think of as American—an upright purpose, a desire to 
serve not only his own country but mankind—which 
made the British public look upon Page as one of the 
most attractive and useful figures in a war-torn Europe. 
There was a certain ruggedness in Page’s exterior which 
the British regarded as distinctly in keeping with this Amer- 
ican flavour. ‘The Ambassador was not a handsome man. 
To one who had heard much of the liveliness of his conver- 
sation and presence a first impression was likely to be dis- 
appointing. His figure at this time was tall, gaunt, and 
lean—and he steadily lost weight during his service in 
England; his head was finely shaped—it was large, with a 
high forehead, his thin gray hair rather increasing its in- 
tellectual aspect; and his big frank brown eyes reflected 
that keen zest for life, that unsleeping interest in everything 
about him, that ever-working intelligence and sympathy 
which were the man’s predominant traits. Butavery large 
nose at first rather lessened the pleasing effects of his other 
features, and a rather weather-beaten, corrugated face 
gave a preliminary suggestion of roughness. Yet Page 
had only to begin talking and the impression immediately 


PAGE—THE MAN 297 


changed. “He puts his mind to yours,’ Dr. Johnson 
said, describing the sympathetic qualities of a friend, and 
the same was true of Page. Half a dozen sentences, 
spoken in his quick, soft, and ingratiating accents, ac- 
companied by the most genial smile, at once converted 
the listener into a friend. Few men have ever lived 
who more quickly responded to this human relation- 
ship. The Ambassador, at the simple approach of a 
human being, became as a man transformed. ‘Tired 
though he might be, low in spirits as he not infrequently 
was, the press of a human hand at once changed him into 
an animated and radiating companion. ‘This responsive- 
ness deceived all his friends in the days of his last illness. 
His intimates who dropped in to see Page invariably 
went away much encouraged and spread optimistic re- 
ports about his progress. A few minutes’ conversation 
with Page would deceive even his physicians. The ex- 
planation was a simple one: the human presence had an 
electric effect upon him, and it is a revealing sidelight on 
Page’s character that almost any man or woman could 
produce this result. As an editor, the readiness with 
which he would listen to suggestions from the humblest 
source was a constant astonishment to his associates. 
The office boy had as accessible an approach to Page 
as had his partners. He never treated an idea, even a 
grotesque one, with contempt; he always had time to 
discuss it, to argue it out, and no one ever left his presence 
thinking that he had made an absurd proposal. Thus 
Page had a profound respect for a human being simply 
because he was a human being; the mere fact that a man, 
woman, or child lived and breathed, had his virtues and 
his failings, constituted in Page’s imagination a tremen- 
dous fact. He could not wound such a living creature 
any more than he could wound a flower or a tree; conse- 


298 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


quently he treated every person as an important member 
of the universe. Not infrequently, indeed, he stormed 
at public men, but his thunder, after all, was not very 
terrifying; his remarks about such personages as Mr. 
Bryan merely reflected his indignation at their policies and 
their influence but did not indicate any feeling against the 
victims themselves. Page said “Good morning” to his 
doorman with the same deference that he showed to Sir 
Edward Grey, and there was not a little stenographer in 
the building whose joys and sorrows did not arouse in him 
the most friendly interest. Some of the most affecting 
letters written about Page, indeed, have come from these 
daily associates of more humble station. “We so often 
speak of Mr. Page,” writes one of the Embassy staff— 
‘*Findlater, Short, and Frederick ’’—these were all English 
servants at the Embassy; “we all loved him equally, 
and hardly a day passes that something does not remind 
us of him, and I often fancy that I hear his laugh, so full 
of kindness and love of life.’ And the impression left 
on those in high position was the same. “I have seen 
ladies representing all that is most worldly in Mayfair,”’ 
writes Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, the editor of the Allantic 
Monthly, “start at the sudden thought of Page’s illness, 
their eyes glistening with tears.”’ 

Perhaps what gave most charm to this human side was 
the fact that Page was fundamentally such a scholarly 
man. This was the aspect which especially delighted 
his English friends. He preached democracy and Ameri- 
canism with an emphasis that almost suggested the back- 
woodsman—the many ideas on these subjects that appear 
in his Jetters Page never hesitated to set forth with all due 
resonance at London dinner tables—yet he phrased his 
creed in language that was little less than literary style, 
and illuminated it with illustrations and a philosophy 


PAGE—THE MAN 299 


that were the product of the most exhaustive reading. 
“Your Ambassador has taught us something that we did 
not know before,’ an English friend remarked to an 
American. “That is that aman can be a democrat and a 
man of culture at the same time.”’ The Greek and Latin 
authors had been Page’s companions from the days when, 
as the holder of the Greek Fellowship at Johns Hopkins, 
he had been a favourite pupil of Basil L. Gildersleeve. 
British statesmen who had been trained at Balliol, in the 
days when Greek was the indispensable ear-mark of a 
gentleman, could thus meet their American associate on 
the most sympathetic terms. Page likewise spoke a 
brand of idiomatic English which immediately put him 
in aclass by himself. He regarded words as sacred things. 
He used them, in his writing or in his speech, with the 
utmost care and discrimination; yet this did not result in 
a halting or stilted style; he spoke with the utmost ease, 
going rapidly from thought to thought, choosing invari- 
ably the one needful word, lighting up the whole with whim- 
sicalities all his own, occasionally emphasizing a good point 
by looking downward and glancing over his eyeglasses, 
perhaps, if he knew his companion intimately, now and 
then giving him a monitory tap on the knee. Page, in 
fact, was a great and incessant talker; hardly anything 
delighted him more than a companionable exchange of 
ideas and impressions; he was seldom so busy that he 
would not push aside his papers for a chat; and he would 
talk with almost any one, on almost any subject—his 
secretaries, his stenographers, his office boys, and any 
crank who succeeded in getting by the doorman—for, in 
spite of his lively warnings against the breed, Page did 
really love cranks and took a collector’s joy in uncovering 
new types. Page’s voice was normally quiet; though he 
had spent all his early life in the South, the characteristic 


300 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Southern accents were ordinarily not observable; yet his 
intonation had a certain gentleness that was probably an 
inheritance of his Southern breeding. Thus, when he 
first began talking, his words would ripple along quietly 
and rapidly; a characteristic pose was to sit calmly, with 
one knee thrown over the other, his hands folded; as his 
interest increased, however, he would get up, perhaps 
walk across the room, or stand before the fireplace, his 
hands behind his back; a large cigar, sometimes unlighted, 
at other times emitting huge clouds of smoke, would 
oscillate from one side of his mouth to the other; his talk 
would grow in earnestness, his voice grow louder, his 
words come faster and faster, until finally they would 
gush forth in a mighty torrent. 

All Page’s personal traits are explained by that one 
characteristic which tempered all others, his sense of 
humour. That Page was above all a serious-minded man 
his letters show; yet his spirits were constantly alert for 
the amusing, the grotesque, and the contradictory; like 
all men who are really serious and alive to the pathos of 
existence, he loved a hearty laugh, especially as he found 
it a relief from the gloom that filled his every waking 
moment in England. Page himself regarded this ability 
to smile as an indispensable attribute to a well-rounded 
life. “‘No man can be a gentleman,” he once declared, 
‘““who does not have a sense of humour.”” Only he who 
possessed this gift, Page believed, had an imaginative 
insight into the failings and the virtues of his brothers; 
only he could have a tolerant attitude toward the stupidi- 
ties of his fellows, to say nothing of hisown. And humour 
with him assumed various shades; now it would flash in 
an epigram, or smile indulgently at a passing human 
weakness; now and then it would break out into genial 
mockery; occasionally it would manifest itself as sheer 


PAGE—THE MAN 301 


horse-play; and less frequently it would become sardonic 
or even savage. It was in this latter spirit that he once 
described a trio of Washington statesmen, whose influence 
he abhorred as, “three minds that occupy a single vacuum.” 
He once convulsed a Scottish audience by describing the 
national motto of Scotland—and doing so with a broad burr 
in his voice that seemed almost to mark the speaker a native 
to the heath—as “Liber-r-ty, fra-a-ternity and f-r-r-u- 
gality.’ The policy of his country occasioned many awk- 
ward moments which, thanks to his talent for amiable 
raillery, he usually succeeded in rendering harmless. Not 
infrequently Page’s fellow guests at the dinner table would 
think the American attitude toward Germany a not 
inappropriate topic for small talk. “Mr. Page,” re- 
marked an exaltedly titled lady in a conversational pause, 
“when is your country going to get into the war)”’ The 
more discreet members of the company gasped, but Page 
was not disturbed. “Please give us at least ninety days, ”’ 
he answered, and an exceedingly disagreeable situation was 
thus relieved by general laughter. 

On another occasion his repudiation of this flippant 
spirit took a more solemn and even more effective form. 
The time was a few days before the United States had 
declared war. Bernstorff had been dismissed; events 
were rapidly rushing toward the great climax; yet the 
behaviour of the Washington Administration was still 
inspiring much caustic criticism. The Pages were pres- 
ent at one of the few dinners which they attended in 
the course of this crisis; certain smart and tactless guests 
did not seem to regard their presence as a bar to many 
gibes against the American policy. Page sat through it 
all impassive, never betraying the slightest resent.ent. 

Presently the ladies withdrew. Page found himself 
sitting next to Mr. Harold Nicolson, an important official 


302 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


in the Foreign Office. It so happened that Mr. Nicolson 
and Page were the only two members of the company who 
were the possessors of a great secret which made ineffably 
silly all the chatter that had taken place during the din- 
ner; this was that the United States had decided on war 
against Germany and would issue the declaration in a 
few days. 

“Well, Mr. Nicolson,” said Page, “I think that you 
and I will drink a glass of wine together.” 

The two men quietly lifted their glasses and drank the 
silent toast. Neither made the slightest reference to the 
forthcoming event. Perhaps the other men present were 
a little mystified, but in a few days they understood what 
it had meant, and also learned how effectively they had 
been rebuked. 

“Ts it any wonder,’ says Mr. Nicolson, telling this 
story, “that I think that Mr. Page is perhaps the greatest 
gentleman I have ever known) He has only one possible 
competitor for this distinction—and that is Arthur Bal- 
four.” 

The English newspapers took delight in printing Page’s 
aphorisms, and several anecdotes that came from America 
afforded them especial joy. One went back to the days 
when the Ambassador was editor of the Allantic Monthly. 
A woman contributor had sent him a story; like most 
literary novices she believed that editors usually rejected 
the manuscripts of unknown writers without reading them. 
She therefore set a trap for Page by pasting together cer- 
tain sheets. The manuscript came back promptly, and, 
as the prospective contributor had hoped, these sheets 
had not been disturbed. These particular sections had 
certainly not been read. The angry author triumphantly 
wrote to Page, explaining how she had caught him and 
denouncing the whole editorial tribe as humbugs. ‘Dear 


PAGE-—-THE MAN 303 


Madam,” Page immediately wrote in reply, “when I 
break an egg at breakfast, I do not have to eat the whole 
of it to find out that it is bad.” Page’s treatment of 
authors, however, was by no means so acrimonious as this 
little note might imply. Indeed, the urbanity and con- 
sideration shown in his correspondence with writers had 
long been a tradition in American letters. The remark of 
O. Henry in this regard promises to become immortal: 
“Page could reject a story with a letter that was so com- 
plimentary,’’ he said, “‘and make everybody feel so happy 
that you could take it to a bank and borrow money on it.”’ 

Another anecdote reminiscent of his editorial days was 
his retort to S. S. McClure, the editor of McClure’s Maga- 
zine. 

“Page,” said Mr. McClure, “there are only three great 
editors in the United States.” 

*“Who’s the third one, Sam)” asked Page. 

Plenty of stories, illustrating Page’s quickness and 
aptness in retort, have gathered about his name in Eng- 
land. Many of them indicate a mere spirit of boyish 
fun. Early in his Ambassadorship he was spending a 
few days at Stratford-on-Avon, his hostess being an 
American woman who had beautifully restored an Eliza- 
bethan house; the garden contained a mulberry tree 
which she liked to think had been planted by Shake- 
speare himself. The dignitaries of Stratford, learning that 
the American Ambassador had reached town, asked 
permission to wait upon him; the Lord Mayor, who headed 
the procession, made an excellent speech, to which Page 
appropriately replied, and several hundred people were 
solemnly presented. After the party had left Page 
turned to his hostess: 

“Have they all gone” 

“Yes.” 


804 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


ADD” 

“esis 

‘Are you sure?”’ 

Yesne 

‘Then let’s take hands and dance around the mul- 
berry tree!”’ 

Page was as good as his word; he danced as gaily as the 
youngest member of the party, to the singing of the old 
English song. 

The great service in St. Paul’s Cathedral, in commem- 
oration of America’s entry into the war, has already been 
described. A number of wounded Americans, boys whose 
zeal for the Allies had led them to enlist in the Canadian 
Army, were conspicuous participants in this celebration. 
After the solemn religious ceremonies, the Ambassador 
and these young men betook themselves for lunch to a 
well-known London restaurant. In an interval of the 
conversation one of the Americans turned to Page. 

‘““Mr. Ambassador, there was just one thing wrong 
with that service.” 

“What was that)” 

‘We wanted to yell, and we couldn’t.”’ 

“Then why don’t you yell now?” 

The boy jumped on a chair and began waving his nap- 
kin. “The Ambassador says we may yell,” he cried. 
* Let’s yell!” 

“And so,” said Page, telling the story, “they yelled for 
five minutes and I yelled with them. We all felt better 
in consequence.’ 

This geniality, this disposition not to take life too 
solemnly, sometimes lightened up the sombre atmos- 
phere of the Foreign Office itself. “Mr. Balfour went on 
a sort of mild rampage yesterday,’ Page records. “The 
British and American navies had come to an arrangement 


PAGE—THE MAN 305 


whereby the Brazilian ships that are coming over to help 
us fight should join the American unit, not the British, 
as was at first proposed. Washington telegraphed me 
that the British Minister at Rio was blocking the game 
by standing out for the first British idea—that the Brazil- 
ian ships should join the British. It turned out in the 
conversation that the British Minister had not been 
informed of the British-American naval arrangement. 
Mr. Balfour sent for Lord Hardinge. He called in one 
of the private secretaries. Was such a thing ever heard 
of? 

“Did you ever know,’ said the indignant Mr. Balfour, 
turning to me, ‘of such a thing as a minister not even be- 
ing informed of his Government’s decisions?’ ‘Yes,’ I 
said, ‘if I ransack my memory diligently, I think I could 
find such cases.’ The meeting went into laughter!”’ 

Evidently the troubles which Page was having with his 
own State Department were not unfamiliar to British 
officialdom. 

Page's letters sufficiently reveal his fondness for Sir 
Edward Grey and the splendid relations that existed be- 
tween them. The sympathetic chords which the two 
men struck upon their first meeting only grew stronger with 
time. A single episode brings out the bonds that drew 
them together. It took place at a time when the 
tension over the blockade was especially threatening. 
One afternoon Page asked for a formal interview; he had 
received another exceedingly disagreeable protest from 
Washington, with instructions to push the matter to a 
decision; the Ambassador left his Embassy with a grave 
expression upon his face; his associates were especially 
worried over the outcome. So critical did the situation 
seem that the most important secretaries gathered in the 
Ambassador’s room, awaiting his return, their nerves 


306 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


strung almost to the breaking point. An hour went by 
and nothing was heard from Page; another hour slowly 
passed and still the Ambassador did not return. The 
faces of the assembled staff lengthened as the minutes 
went by; what was the Ambassador doing at the Foreign 
Office? So protracted an interview could portend only 
evil; already, in the minds of these nervous young men, 
ultimatums were flying between the United States and 
Great Britain, and even war might be hanging in the 
balance. Another hour drew out its weary length; the 
room became dark, dinner time was approaching, and still 
Page failed to make his appearance. At last, when his 
distracted subordinates were almost prepared to go in 
search of their chief, the Ambassador walked jauntily in, 
smiling and apparently carefree. What had happened? 
What was to be done about the detained ships? 

‘What ships?” asked Page, and then suddenly he re- 
membered. ‘‘Oh, yes—those.”’ That was all right; Sir 
Edward had at once promised to release them; it had all 
been settled in a few minutes. 

“Then why were you so long?” 

The truth came out: Sir Edward and Page had quickly 
turned from intercepted cargoes to the more congenial 
subject of Wordsworth, Tennyson, and other favourite 
poets, and the rest of the afternoon had been consumed in 
discussing this really important business. 

Perhaps Page was not so great a story-teller as many 
Americans, but he excelled in a type of yarn that especially 
delights Englishmen, for it is the kind that is native to the 
American soil. He possessed an inexhaustible stock of 
Negro anecdotes, and he had the gift of bringing them 
out at precisely the right point. There was one which the 
Archbishop of York never tired of repeating. Soon after 
America entered the war, the Archbishop asked Page how 


PAGE—THE MAN 307 


long his country was “‘in for.” “I can best answer that 
by telling you a story,” said Page. “There were two 
Negroes who had just been sentenced to prison terms. As 
they were being taken away in the carriage placed at their 
disposal by the United States Government, one said to 
the other, ‘Sam, how long is you in fo’?’ ‘I guess dat it’s 
a yeah or two yeahs,’ said Sam. ‘How long is you in fo’!”’ 
‘I guess it’s from now on,’ said the other darky.” “From 
now on,” remarked the Archbishop, telling this story. 
‘What could more eloquently have described America’s 
attitude toward the war?”’ 

The mention of the Archbishop suggests another of 
Page’s talents—the aptness of his letters of introduc- 
tion. In the spring of 1918 the Archbishop, at the 
earnest recommendation of Page and Mr. Balfour, came 
to the United States. Page prepared the way by letters 
to several distinguished Americans, of which this one, to 
Theodore Roosevelt, is a fair sample: 


To Theodore Roosevelt 


| London, January 16, 1918. 
Dear Mr. RoosEVELT: 


The Archbishop of York goes to the United States to 
make some observations of us and of our ways and to 
deliver addresses—on the invitation of some one of our 
church organizations; a fortunate event for us and, I have 
ventured to tell him, for him also. 

During his brief stay in our country, I wish him to 
make your acquaintance, and I[ have given him a card 
of introduction to you, and thus I humbly serve you 
both. 

The Archbishop is a man and a brother, a humble, 
learned, earnest, companionable fellow, with most charm- 
ing manners and an attractive personality, a good friend of 


308 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


mine, which argues much for him and (I think) implies also 
something in my behalf. You will enjoy him. 
I am, dear Mr. Roosevelt, 
Sincerely yours, 
WALTER H. PAGE. 


Greatly as Page loved England he never ceased to 
preach his Americanism. That he preferred his own 
country to any other and that he believed that it was its 
ereatest destiny to teach its institutions to the rest of the 
world, Page’s letters show; yet this was with him no cheap 
spread-eagleism; it was a definite philosophy which the 
Ambassador had completely thought out. He never 
hesitated to express his democratic opinions in any com- 
pany, and only once or twice were there any signs that these 
ideas jarred a little in certain strongholds of conservatism. 
Even in the darkest period of American neutrality Page’s 
faith in the American people remained complete. After 
this country had entered the war and the apparent slow- 
ness of the Washington Administration had raised certain 
questionings, Page never doubted that the people them- 
selves, however irresolute and lukewarm their representa- 
tives might be, would force the issue to its only logical 
end. Even so friendly a man as Mr. Balfour once voiced 
a popular apprehension that the United States might 
not get into the war with all its strength or might with- 
draw prematurely. This was in the early period of our 
participation. “Who is going to stop the American 
people and how?” Page quickly replied. “I think that 
was a good answer,” he said, as he looked back at the 
episode in the summer of 1918, when hundreds of thou- 
sands of Americans were landing in France every month. 
A scrap of his writing records a discussion at a dinner 
party on this question: “If you could have a month in any 


PAGE—THE MAN 309 


time and any country, what time and what country would 
you choose?”’ The majority voted for England in the 
time of Elizabeth, but Page’s preference was for Athens 
in the days of Pericles. Then came a far more interesting 
debate: “If you could spend a second lifetime when and 
where would you choose to spend it)’ On this Page 
had not a moment’s hesitation: “In the future and in the 
U.S. A.!” and he upheld his point with such persuasive- 
ness that he carried the whole gathering with him. His 
love of anything suggesting America came out on all 
occasions. One of his English hostesses once captivated 
him by serving corn bread at a luncheon. “The Ameri- 
can Ambassador and corn bread!”’ he exclaimed with all 
the delight of a schoolboy. Again he was invited, with 
another distinguished American, to serve as godfather at 
the christening of the daughter of an American woman 
who had married an Englishman. When the ceremony 
was finished he leaned over the font toward his fellow 
godfather. “Born on July 4th,” he exclaimed, ‘“‘of 
an American mother! And we two Yankee godfathers! 
We'll see that this child is taught the Constitution of the 
United States!” 

One day an American duchess came into Page’s office. 

“T am going home for a little visit and I want a pass- 
port,” she said. 

“But you don’t get a passport here,’ Page replied. 
“You must go to the Foreign Office.”’ 

His visitor was indignant. 

“Not at all,” she answered. “I am an American: you 
know that I am; you knew my father. I want an Ameri- 
can passport.”’ 

Page patiently explained the citizenship and naturaliza- 
tion laws and finally convinced his caller that she was now 
a British subject and must have a British passport. As 


310 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


this American duchess left the room he shook at her a 
menacing forefinger. 

‘Don’t tell me,” was the Ambassador’s parting shot, 
“that you thought that you could have your Duke and 
Uncle Sam, too!” 

The judgments which Page passed on men and things 
were quick and they were not infrequently wise. One of 
these judgments had historic consequences the end of which 
cannot even yet be foreseen. On the outbreak of hostil- 
ities, as already related, an American Relief Committee 
was organized in London to look out for the interests of 
stranded Americans. Page kept a close eye on its opera- 
tions, and soon his attention was attracted by the noise- 
less efficiency of an American engineer of whom he 
had already caught a few fleeting glimpses in the period 
of peace. After he had finished his work with the 
American Committee, Mr. Herbert C. Hoover began to 
make his arrangements to leave for the United States. 
His private affairs had been disorganized; he had al- 
ready sent his family home, and his one ambition was 
to get on the first ship sailing for the United States. 
The idea of Belgian relief, or of feeding starving people 
anywhere, had never occurred to him. At this moment 
an American, Mr. Millard K. Shaler, came from Brussels 
and gave the most harrowing account of conditions in 
Belgium. Mr. Hoover took Mr. Shaler to Page, who 
immediately became sympathetic. The Ambassador ar- 
ranged an interview between Mr. Hoover and Sir Edward 
Grey, who likewise showed great interest and promised 
government support. Soon afterward three Belgians 
arrived and described the situation as immediately alarm- 
ing: Brussels had only food enough to feed the people for 
thirty-six hours; after that, unless help were forthcoming, 
the greatest distress would set in. Five men—Page, the 


PAGE—THE MAN 7 311 


three Belgians, and Mr. Hoover—at once got together at 
the American Embassy. Upon the result of that meeting 
hung the fate of millions of people. Who before had ever 
undertaken a scheme for feeding an entire nation for an 
indefinite period? That there were great obstacles in the 
way all five men knew; the British Admiralty in particular 
were strongly opposed; there was a fear that the food, if 
it could be acquired and sent to Belgium, would find its 
way to the German Army. Unless the British Govern- 
ment could be persuaded that this could be prevented, the 
enterprise would fail at the start. How could it be 
done? 

“There is only one way,” said Page. “Some govern- 
ment must give its guarantee that this food will get to the 
Belgian people.” ‘And, of course,’’ he added, “there 
is only one government that can do that. It must be the 
American Government.” 

Mr. Hoover pointed out that any such guarantee in- 
volved the management of transportation; only by con- 
trolling the railroads could the American Government 
make sure that this food would reach its destination. 

And that, added Page, involved a director—some one 
man who could take charge of the whole enterprise. Who 
should it be? 

Then Page turned quickly to the young American. 

“Hoover, you re It!”’ 

Mr. Hoover made no reply; he neither accepted nor 
rejected the proposal. He merely glanced at the clock, 
then got up and silently left the room. In a few 
minutes he returned and entered again into the dis- 
cussion. : 

“Hoover, why did you get up and leave us so 
abruptly)” asked Page, a little puzzled over this be- 
haviour. 


312 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


“T saw by the clock,” came the answer—and it was a 
story that Page was fond of telling, as illustrating the 
rapidity with which Mr. Hoover worked—‘‘that there 
was an hour left before the Exchange closed in New York. , 
So I went out and cabled, buying several millions of 
bushels of wheat—for the Belgians, of course.” 


For what is usually known as “society” Page had little 
inclination. Yet for social intercourse on a more genuine 
plane he had real gifts. Had he enjoyed better health, 
week ends in the country would have afforded him wel- 
come entertainment. He also liked dinner parties but in- 
dulged in them very moderately. He was a member of 
many London clubs but he seldom visited any of them. 
There were a number of organizations, however, which he 
regularly attended. The Society of Dilettanti, a company 
of distinguished men interested in promoting the arts and 
improving the public taste, which has been continuously 
in existence since 1736, enrolling in each generation the 
greatest painters and writers of the time, elected Page 
to membership. He greatly enjoyed its dinners in the 
Banquet Hall of the Grafton Gallery. “Last night,” he 
writes, describing his initial appearance, “I attended my 
first Dilettanti dinner and was inducted, much as a new 
Peer is inducted into the House of Lords. Lord Mersey 
in the chair—in ared robe. These gay old dogs have had 
a fine time of it for nearly 200 years—good wine, high 
food, fine satisfaction. The oldest dining society in the 
Kingdom. The blue blood old Briton has the art of en- 
joying himself reduced to a very fine point indeed.” An- 
other gathering whose meetings he seldom missed was 
that of the Kinsmen, an informal club of literary men 
who met occasionally for food and converse in the Troca- 
dero Restaurant. Here Page would meet such congenial 


PAGE—THE MAN Oto 


souls as Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero, all of 
whom retain lively memories of Page at these gatherings. 
“He was one of the most lovable characters I have ever 
had the good fortune to encounter,’ says Sir Arthur 
Pinero, recalling these occasions. “In what special 
quality or qualities lay the secret of his charm and in- 
fluence? Surely in his simplicity and transparent hon- 
esty, and in the possession of a disposition which, without 
the smallest loss of dignity, was responsive and affection- 
ate. Distinguished American Ambassadors will come and 
go, and will in their turn win esteem and admiration. But 
none, I venture to say, will efface the recollection of Wal- 
ter Page from the minds of those who were privileged to 
gain his friendship.” 

One aspect of Page that remains fixed in the memory of 
his associates is his unwearied industry with the pen. 
His official communications and his ordinary corre- 
spondence Page dictated; but his personal letters he wrote 
with his own hand. He himself deplored the stenogra- 
pher as a deterrent to good writing; the habit of dictating, 
he argued, led to wordiness and general looseness of 
thought. Practically all the letters published in these 
volumes were therefore the painstaking work of Page’s 
own pen. His handwriting was so beautiful and clear 
that, in his editorial days, the printers much preferred it 
as ““copy”’ to typewritten matter. This habit is especially 
surprising in view of the Ambassador’s enormous episto- 
lary output. It must be remembered that the letters 
included in the present book are only a selection from 
the vast number that he wrote during his five years in 
England; many of these letters fill twenty and thirty 
pages of script; the labour involved in turning them out; 
day after day, seems fairly astounding. Yet with Page 
this was a labour of love. AI through his Ambassador- 


314. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


ship he seemed hardly contented unless he had a pen in 
his hand. As his secretaries would glance into his room, 
there they would see the Ambassador bending over his 
desk—writing, writing, eternally writing; sometimes he 
would call them in, and read what he had written, never 
hesitating to tear up the paper if their unfavourable 
criticisms seemed to him well taken. The Ambassador 
kept a desk also in his bedroom, and here his most im- 
portant correspondence was attended to. Page’s all- 
night self-communings before his wood fire have already 
been described, and he had another nocturnal occupation 
that was similarly absorbing. Many a night, after re- 
turning late from his office or from dinner, he would put 
on his dressing gown, sit at his bedroom desk, and start 
pouring forth his inmost thoughts in letters to the Presi- 
dent, Colonel House, or some other correspondent. His pen 
flew over the paper with the utmost rapidity and the 
Ambassador would sometimes keep at his writing until 
two or three o'clock in the morning. There is a fre- 
quently expressed fear that letter writing is an art of the 
past; that the intervention of the stenographer has de- 
stroyed its spontaneity; yet it is evident that in Page 
the present generation has a letter writer of the old- 
fashioned kind, for he did all his writing with his own hand 
and under circumstances that would assure the utmost 
freshness and vividness to the result. 

An occasional game of golf, which he played badly, 
a trip now and then to rural England—these were 
Page’s only relaxations from his duties. Though he was 
not especially fond of leaving his own house, he wes al- 
ways delighted when visitors came to him. /\nd the 
American Embassy, during the five years from 1913 to 
1918, extended a hospitality which was fittingly democratic 
in its quality but which gradually drew within its doors 


PAGE—THE MAN 315 


all that was finest in the intellect and character of Eng- 
land. Page himself attributed the popularity of his 
house to his wife. Mrs. Page certainly embodied the 
traits most desirable in the Ambassadress of a great 
Republic. A woman of cultivation, a tireless reader, 
a close observer of people and events and a_ shrewd 
commentator upon them, she also had an unobtrusive 
dignity, a penetrating sympathy, and a capacity for 
human association, which, while more restrained and 
more placid than that of her husband, made her a helpful 
companion for a sorely burdened man. The American 
Embassy under Mr. and Mrs. Page was not one of Lon- 
don’s smart houses as that word is commonly under- 
stood in this great capital. But No. 6 Grosvenor Square, 
in the spaciousness of its rooms, the simple beauty of its 
furnishings, and especially in its complete absence of 
ostentation, made it the worthy abiding place of an Amer- 
ican Ambassador. And the people who congregated there 
were precisely the kind that appeal to the educated Amer- 
ican. “I didn’t know I was getting into an assembly 
of immortals,’ exclaimed Mr. Hugh Wallace, when he 
dropped in one Thursday afternoon for tea, and found 
himself foregathered with Sir Edward Grey, Henry James, 
John Sargent, and other men of the same type. It was 
this kind of person who most naturally gravitated to the 
Page establishment, not the ultra-fashionable, the merely 
rich, or the many titled. The formal functions which the 
position demanded the Pages scrupulously gave; but the 
affairs which Page most enjoyed and which have left 
the most lasting remembrances upon his guests were the in- 
formal meetings with his chosen favourites, for the most 
part literary men. Here Page’s sheer brilliancy of conver- 
sation showed at its best. Lord Bryce, Sir John Simon, 
John Morley, the inevitable companions, Henry James 


916 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


and John Sargent—‘‘ What things have I seen done at 
the Mermaid”’; and certainly these gatherings of wits and 
savants furnished as near an approach to its Elizabethan 
prototype as London could then present. 

Besides his official activities Page performed great ser- 
vices to the two countries by his speeches. The demands 
of this kind on an American Ambassador are always num- 
erous, but Page’s position was an exceptional one; it was 
his fortune to represent America at a time when his own 
country and Great Britain were allies in a great war. He 
could therefore have spent practically all his time in speak- 
ing had he been so disposed. Of the hundreds of invita- 
tions received he was able to accept only a few, but most 
of these occasions became memorable ones. In any spec- 
tacular sense Page was not an orator; he rather despised 
the grand manner, with its flourishes and its tricks; the 
name of public speaker probably best describes his talents 
on the platform. Here his style was earnest and con- 
versational: his speech flowed with the utmost readiness; 
it wasinvariably quiet and restrained; he was never aiming 
at big effects, but his words always went home. Of the 
series of speeches that stand to his credit in England prob- 
ably the one that will be longest remembered is that 
delivered at Plymouth on August 4, 1917, the third an- 
niversary of the war. This not only reviewed the com- 
mon history of the two nations for three hundred years, 
and suggested a programme for making the bonds tighter 
yet, but it brought the British public practical assur- 
ances as to America’s intentions in the conflict. Up to 
that time there had been much vagueness and doubt; no 
official voice had spoken the clear word for the United 
States; the British public did not know what to expect 
from their kinsmen overseas. But after Page’s Plymouth 
speech the people of Great Britain looked forward with 


PAGE—THE MAN BLT 


complete confidence to the codperation of the two coun- 
tries and to the inevitable triumph of this codperation. 


To Arthur W. Page 


Knebworth House, Knebworth, 


August 11, 1917. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 


First of all, these three years have made me tired. I 
suppose there’s no doubt about that, if there were any 
scientific way of measuring it. While of course the strain 
now is nothing like what it was during the days of neutral: 
ity, there’s yet some strain. 

I went down to Plymouth to make a speech on the an- 
niversary of the beginning of the war—went to tell them 
in the west of England something about relations with 
the United States and something about what the United 
States is doing in the war. It turned out to be a great 
success. The Mayor met me at the train; there was a 
military company, the Star Spangled Banner and real 
American applause. All the way through the town the 
streets were lined with all the mhabitants and more— 
apparently millions of ’em. ‘They made the most of it for 
five solid days. 

On the morning of August 4th the Mayor gave me an 
official luncheon. Thence we went to the esplanade fac- 
ing the sea, where soldiers and sailors were lined up for 
half a mile. The American Flag was flung loose, the Star 
Spangled Banner broke forth from the band, and all the 
people in that part of the world were there gathered to see 
the show. After all this salute the Mayor took me to the 
stand and he and I made speeches, and the background 
was a group of dozens of admirals and generals and many 
smaller fry. Then I reviewed the troops; then they 
marched by me and in an hour or two the show was over. 


318 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Then the bowling club—the same club and the same 
green as when Drake left the game to sail out to meet the 
Armada. 

Then a solemn service in the big church, where the 
prayers were written and the hymns selected with refer- 
ence to our part in the war. 

Then, of course, a dinner party. At eight o'clock at 
night, the Guildhall, an enormous town hall, was packed 
with people and I made my speech at ’em. <A copy (some- 
what less good than the version I gave them) goes to you, 
along with a leader from the Times. They were vocifer- 
ously grateful for any assuring word about the United 
States. It’s strange how very little the provincial Eng- 
lander knows about what we have done and mean to do. 
They took the speech finely, and I have had good letters 
about it from all sorts of people in every part of the King- 
dom. 

Then followed five days of luncheons and dinners and 
garden parties—and (what I set out to say) I got back to 
London last night dead tired. To-day your mother and 
I came here—about twenty-five miles from London—for 
a fortnight. 

This is Bulwer-Lytton’s house—a fine old English place 
hired this year by Lady Strafford, whom your mother is 
visiting for a fortnight or more, and they let me come 
along, too. They have given me the big library, as good 
a room as [ want—with as bad pens as they can find in 
the Kingdom. | 

Your mother is tired, too. Since the American Red 
Cross was organized here, she has added to her committee 
and hospitals. But she keeps well and very vigorous. A 
fortnight here will set her up. She enjoyed Plymouth 
very much in spite of the continual rush, and it was a rush. 

What the United States is doing looks good and large at 


PAGE—THE MAN 319 


this distance. The gratitude here is unbounded; but I 
detect a feeling here and there of wonder whether we are 
going to keep up this activity to the end. 

I sometimes feel that the German collapse may come 
next winter. Their internal troubles and the lack of 
sufficient food and raw materials do increase. The break- 
ing point may be reached before another summer. I 
wish I could prove it or even certainly predict it. But it is 
at least conceivable. Alas, no one can prove anything 
about the war. The conditions have no precedents. 
The sum of human misery and suffering is simply incal- 
culable, as is the loss of life; and the gradual and general 
brutalization goes on and on and on far past any preceding 
horrors. 

With all my love to you and Mollie and the trio, 

Wire. 


And so for five busy and devastating years Page did his 
work. The stupidities of Washington might drive him 
to desperation, ill-health might increase his periods of 
despondency, the misunderstandings that he occasionally 
had with the British Government might add to his dis- 
couragements, but a naturally optimistic and humorous 
temperament overcame all obstacles, and did its part in 
bringing about that united effort which ended in victory. 
And that it was a great part, the story of his Ambassador- 
ship abundantly proves. Page was not the soldier work- 
ing in the blood and slime of Flanders, nor the sea fighter 
spending day and night around the foggy coast of Ireland, 
nor the statesman bending parliaments to his will and 
manipulating nations and peoples in the mighty game 
whose stake was civilization itself. But history will in- 
deed be ungrateful if it ever forget the gaunt and pensive 
figure, clad in a dressing gown, sitting long into the morn- 


320 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


ing before the smouldering fire at 6 Grosvenor Square, 
seeking to find some way to persuade a reluctant and hesi- 
tating President to lead his country in the defense of 
liberty and determined that, so far as he could accom- 
plish it, the nation should play a part in the great assize 
that was in keeping with its traditions and its instincts. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 


To Edward M. House 


Knebworth House 
Sunday, September, [sic] 1917. 
Dear House: 

. . . By far the most important peace plan or utter- 
ance is the President’s extraordinary answer to the Pope. 
His flat and convincing refusal to take the word of the pres- 
ent rulers of Germany as of any value has had more effect 
here than any other utterance and it is, so far, the best con- 
tribution we have made to the war. The best evidence 
that I can get shows also that it has had more effect in 
Germany than anything else that has been said by any- 
body. That hit the bull’s-eye with perfect accuracy; and 
it has been accepted here as the war aim and the war con- 
dition. So far as I can make out it is working in Germany 
toward peace with more effect than any other deliver- 
ance made by anybody. And it steadied the already un- 
shakable resolution here amazingly. 

I can get any information here of course without danger 
of the slightest publicity—an important point, because 
even the mention of peace now is dangerous. All the 
world, under this long strain, is more or less off the normal, 

10n August 1, 1917, Pope Benedict XV sent a letter to the Powers urging them 
to bring the war to an end and outlining possible terms of settlement. On August 
29th President Wilson sent his historic reply. This declared, in memorable 
language, that the Hohenzollern dynasty was unworthy of confidence and that 
the United States would have no negotiations with its representatives. It in- 


ferentially took the stand that the Kaiser must abdicate, or be deposed, and the 
German autocracy destroyed, as part of the conditions of peace. 


321 


322 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


and all my work—even routine work—is done with the 
profoundest secrecy: it has to be. 

Our energetic war preparations call forth universal ad- 
miration and gratitude here on all sides and nerve up the 
British and hearten them more than I know how to ex- 
plain. There is an eager and even pathetic curiosity to 
hear all the details, to hear, in fact, anything about the 
United States; and what the British do not know about the 
United States would fill the British Museum. They do 
know, however, that they would soon have been obliged 
to make an unsatisfactory peace if we hadn’t come in when 
we did and they freely say so. The little feeling of jeal- 
ousy that we should come in and win the war at the end 
has, I think, been forgotten, swallowed up in their genuine 
gratitude. 

Sincerely yours, 
Watrter H. Pace. 


To Arthur W. Page 


American Embassy, 


London, Sept. 3, 1917. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 


The President has sent Admiral Mayo over to 
study the naval situation. ‘So far as I can learn the feel- 
ing at Washington is that the British Navy has done 
nothing. Why, it hasn’t attacked the German naval bases 
and destroyed the German navy and ended the war! 
Why not? I have a feeling that Mayo will supplement 
and support Sims in hisreport. Then gradually the naval 
men at Washington may begin to understand and they 
may get the important facts into the President’s head. 
Meantime the submarine work of the Germans continues 
to win the war, although the government and the people 
here and in the United States appear not to believe it. 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 320 


They are still destroying seventy-five British ships a 
month besides an additional (smaller) number of allied 
and neutral ships. And all the world together is not 
turning out seventy-five ships a month; nor are we all 
destroying submarines as fast as the Germans are turning 
them out. Yet all the politicians are putting on a cheer- 
ful countenance about it because the Germans are not 
starving England out and are not just now sinking passen- 
ger ships. ‘They may begin this again at any time. They 
have come within a few feet of torpedoing two of our 
American liners. The submarine ts the war yet, but no- 
body seems disposed to believe it. They'll probably wake 
up with a great shock some day—or the war may possibly 
end before the destruction of ships becomes positively 
fatal. 

The President’s letter to the Pope gives him the moral 
and actual leadership now. ‘The Hohenzollerns must go. 
Somehow the subjects and governments of these Old 
World kingdoms have not hitherto laid emphasis on this. 
There’s still a divinity that doth hedge a king in most 
European minds. To me this is the very queerest thing 
in the whole world. What again if Germany, Austria, 
Spain should follow Russia? Whether they do or not 
crowns will not henceforth be so popular. There is an 
unbounded enthusiasm here for the President’s letter and 
for the President in general. 

In spite of certain details which it seems impossible to 
make understood on the Potomac, the whole American 
preparation and enthusiasm seem from this distance to 
be very fine. The people seem in earnest. When I read 
about tax bills, about the food regulation and a thousand 
other such things, I am greatly gratified. And it proves 
that we were right when we said that during the days 
of neutrality the people were held back. It all looks 


294 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


exceedingly good from this distance, and it makes me 


homesick. 
To Frank N. Doubleday 


American Embassy. 
(Undated, but written about October 1, 1917] 
DEAR EFFENDI: 

: The enormous war work and war help that 
everybody seems to be doing in the United States is 
heartily appreciated here—most heartily. The English 
eat out of our hands. You can see American uniforms 
every day in London. Every ship brings them. Every- 
body’s thrilled to see them. The Americans here have 
great houses opened as officers’ clubs, and scrumptious 
huts for men where countesses and other high ladies hand 
out sandwiches and serve ice cream and ginger beer. 
Our two admirals are most popular with all classes, from 
royalty down. English soldiers salute our officers in the 
street and old gentlemen take off their hats when they 
meet nurses with the American Red Cross uniform. My 
Embassy now occupies four buildings for offices, more 
than half of them military and naval. And my own staff, 
proper, is the biggest in the world and keeps growing. 
When I go, in a little while, to receive the Freedom of the 
City of Edinburgh, I shall carry an Admiral or a General 
as my aide! 

That’s the way we keep a stiff upper lip. 

And Good Lord! it’s tiresome. Peace? We'd all give 
our lives for the right sort of peace, and never move an 
eyelid. But only the wrong sort has yet come within 
reach. The other sort is coming, however; for these pres- 
ent German contortions are the beginning of the end. 
But the weariness of it, and the tragedy and the cost. 
No human creature was ever as tired as I am. Yet I keep 
well and keep going and keep working all my waking 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 325 


hours. When it ends, I shall collapse and go home and 
have to rest a while. So at least I feel now. And, if I 
outlive the work and the danger and the weariness, I'll 
praise God for that. And it doesn’t let up a single day. 
And I’m no worse off than everybody else. 

So this over-weary world goes, dear Effendi; but the 
longest day shades at last down to twilight and rest; and 
so this will be. And poor old Europe will then not be 
worth while for the rest of our lives—a vast grave and 
ruin where unmated women will mourn and starvation 
will remain for years to come. 

God bless us. 

Sincerely yours, with my love to all the boys, 
Wel PR: 


To Frank N. Doubleday 


London, November 9, 1917. 
DEAR EFFENDI: 

This infernal thing drags its slow length along 
so that we cannot see even a day ahead, not to say a week, 
or a year. If any man here allowed the horrors of it to 
dwell on his mind he would go mad, so we have to skip 
over these things somewhat lightly and try to keep the 
long, definite aim in our thoughts and to work away dis- 
tracted as little as possible by the butchery and by the 
starvation that is making this side of the world a shambles 
and a wilderness. There is hardly a country on the Con- 
tinent where people are not literally starving to death, 
and in many of them by hundreds of thousands; and this 
state of things is going to continue for a good many years 
after the war. God knows we (I mean the American 
people) are doing everything we can to alleviate it but 


there is so much more to be done than any group of forces 
can possibly do, that I have a feeling that we have hardly 


2996 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


touched the borders of the great problem itself. Of course 
here in London we are away from all that. In spite of the 
rations we get quite enough to eat and it’s as good as it is 
usually in England, but we have no right to complain. Of 
course we are subject to air raids, and the wise air people 
here think that early next spring we are going to be bom- 
barded with thousands of aeroplanes, and with new kinds 
of bombs and gases in a well-organized effort to try actually 
to destroy London. Possibly that will come; we must 
simply take our chance, every man sticking to his job. 
Already the slate shingles on my roof have been broken, 
and bricks have been knocked down my chimney; the sky- 
light was hit and glass fell down all through the halls, and 
the nose of a shrapnel shell, weighing eight pounds, fell just 
in front of my doorway androlledinmy area. Thisis the 
sort of thing we incidentally get, not of course from the 
enemy directly, but from the British guns in London which 
shoot these things at German aeroplanes. What goes up 
must come down. Between our own defences and the' 
enemy, God knows which will kill us first! 

In spite of all this I put my innocent head on my pillow 
every night and get a good night’s sleep after the bombing 
is done, and I thank Heaven that nothing interrupts my 
sleep. This, and a little walking, which is all I get time to 
do in these foggy days, constitute my life outdoors and 
precious little of it is outdoors. 

Then on every block that I know of in London there is 
a hospital or supply place and the ambulances are bringing 
the poor fellows in all the time. We don’t get any gaso- 
lene to ride so we have to walk. We don’t get any white 
bread so we have to eat stuff made of flour and corn meal 
ground so fine that it isn’t good. While everybody gets 
a little thinner, the universal opinion is that they also get 
a little better, and nobody is going to die here of hunger. 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES SPE 


We feel a little more cheerful about the submarines than 
we did some time ago. For some reason they are not get- 
ting so many ships. One reason, I am glad to believe, is 
that they are getting caught themselves. If I could re- 
member all the stories that I hear of good fighting with 
the submarines [ could keep you up two nights when I get 
home, but in these days one big thing after another crowds 
so in men’s minds that the Lord knows if, when I get 
home, I shall remember anything. 
Always heartily yours, 
WV) Eo Ds 


To the President 


London, December 3, 1917. 
Dear Mr. PRESIDENT: 

Some of the British military men in London 
are not hopeful of an early end of the war nor even cheerful 
about the result. They are afraid of the war-weariness 
that overcame Russia and gave Italy a setback. They 
say the military task, though long and slow and hard, 
can be done if everybody will pull together and keep at 
the job without weariness—be done by our help. But they 
have fits of fear of France. They are discouraged by the 
greater part of Lord Lansdowne’s letter.1. I myself do not 
set great value on this military feeling in London, for the 
British generals in France do not share it. Lord French 
once said to me and General Robertson, too, that when 
they feel despondent in London, they go to the front and 
get cheered up. But it does seem to be a long job. 
Evidently the Germans mean to fight to the last man 





10n November 29, 1917, the London Daily Telegraph published a letter from 
the Marquis of Lansdowne, which declared that the war had lasted too long and 
suggested that the British restate their war aims. This letter was severely con- 
demned by the British press and by practically all representative British states- 
men. It produced a most lamentable impression in the United States also. 


2°98 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


unless they can succeed in inducing the Allies to meet them 
to talk it over without naming their terms in advance. 
That is what Lord Lansdowne favours, and no public out- 
giving by any prominent man in England has called forth 
such a storm of protest since the war began. I think I 
see the genesis of his thought, and it is this: there is 
nothing in his letter and there was nothing in the half dozen 
or more rather long conversations that I have had with 
him on other subjects to show that he has the slightest 
conception of democracy as a social creed or as a political 
system. He is, I think, the most complete aristocrat 
that I have ever met. He doesn’t see the war at all asa 
struggle between democracy and its opposite. He sees it 
merely as a struggle between Germany and the Allies; 
and inferentially he is perfectly willing the Kaiser should 
remain in power. He is of course a patriotic man and a 
man of great cultivation. But he doesn’t see the deeper 
meaning of the conflict. Add to this defect of under- 
standing, a long period of bad health and a lasting de- 
pression because of the loss of his son, and his call to the 
war-weary ceases to be a surprise. 
I am, dear Mr. President, 
Sincerely yours, 
WALTER H. Pace. 


To Arthur W. Page 


American Embassy, 


London, December 23, 1917. 
Dear ARTHUR: 


I sent you a Christmas cable yesterday for everybody. 
That’s about all I can send in these days of slow mail and 
restricted shipping and enormously high prices; and you 
gave all the girls each $100 for me, for the babies and them- 
selves? That'll show ’em that at least we haven’t for- 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 329 


gotten them. forgotten? Your mother and I are always 
talking of the glad day when we can go home and live 
among them. We get as homesick as small boys their 
first month at a boarding school. Do you remember the 
day I left you at Lawrenceville, a forlorn and lonely kid?— 
It’s like that. 

A wave of depression hangs over the land like a Lon- 
don fog. And everybody on this tired-out side of the 
world shows a disposition to lean too heavily on us—to 
depend on us so completely that the fear arises that they 
may unconsciously relax their own utmost efforts when we 
begin to fight. Yet they can’t in the least afford to relax, 
and, when the time comes, I dare say they will not. Yet 
the plain truth is, the French may give out next year for 
lack of men. I do not mean that they will quit, but that 
their fighting strength will have passed its maximum and 
that they will be able to play only a sort of second part. 
Except the British and the French, there’s no nation in 
Europe worth a tinker’s damn when you come to the real 
scratch. ‘The whole continent is rotten or tyrannical or 
yellow-dog. I wouldn’t give Long Island or Moore 
County for the whole of continental Europe, with its 
kings and itching palms. 

: Waves of depression and of hope—if not of 
ainsiem —eaie and go. Iam told, and I think truly, that 
waves of weariness come in London far oftener and more 
depressingly than anywhere else in the Kingdom. ‘There 
is no sign nor fear that the British will give up; they'll 
hold on till the end. Winston Churchill said to me last 
night: “We can hold on till next year. But after 1918, it'll 
be your fight. We'll have to depend on you.” I told 
him that such a remark might well be accepted in some 
quarters as a British surrender. Then he came up to the 
scratch: ‘Surrender? Never.’ But I fear we need—in 


330 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


some practical and non-ostentatious way—now and then 
to remind all these European folk that we get no particular 
encouragement by being unduly leaned on. 

It is, however, the weariest Christmas in all British 
annals, certainly since the Napoleonic wars. The unto- 
ward event after the British advance toward Cambrai 
caused the retirement of six British generals and deepened 
the depression here. Still I can see it now passing. Even 
a little victory will bring back a wave of cheerfulness. 

Depression or elation show equally the undue strain 
that British nerves are under. I dare say nobody is en- 
tirely normal. News of many sorts can now be circu- 
lated only by word of mouth. The queerest stories are 
whispered about and find at least temporary credence. 
For instance: The report has been going around that the 
revolution that took place in Portugal the other day was 
caused by the Germans (likely enough); that it was a 
monarchical movement and that the Germans were going 
to put the King back on the throne as soon as the war 
ended. Sensation-mongers appear at every old-woman’s 
knitting circle. And all this has an effect on conduct. 
Two young wives of noble officers now in France have just 
run away with two other young noblemen—to the scandal 
of a large part of good society in London. It is universally 
said that the morals of more hitherto good people are 
wrecked by the strain put upon women by the absence of 
their husbands than was ever before heard of. Every- 
body is overworked. Fewer people are literally truthful 
than ever before. Men and women break down and fall 
out of working ranks continuously. The number of men 
in the government who have disappeared from public 
view is amazing, the number that would like to disappear 
is still greater—from sheer overstrain. The Prime Min- 
ister is tired. Bonar Law in a long conference that Crosby 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES Oot 


and I had with him yesterday wearily ran all round a circle 
rather than hit a plain proposition with a clear decision. 
Mr. Balfour has kept his house from overwork a few days 
every recent week. I lunched with Mr. Asquith yesterday; 
even he seemed jaded; and Mrs. Asquith assured me that 
“everything is going to the devil damned fast.’’ Some con- 
spicuous men who have always been sober have taken to 
drink. The very few public dinners that are held are 
served with ostentatious meagreness to escape criticism. 
I attended one last week at which there was no bread, no 
butter, no sugar served. AIL of which doesn’t mean that 
the world here is going to the bad—only that it moves back- 
ward and forward by emotions; and this is normally a most 
unemotional race. Overwork and the loss of sons and 
friends—the list of the lost grows—always make an abnor- 
mal strain. The churches are fuller than ever before. 
So, too, are the “‘parlours’”’ of the fortune-tellers. So 
also the theatres—in the effort to forget one’s self. There 
are afternoon dances for young officers at home on leave: 
the curtains are drawn and the music is muffled. More 
marriages take place—blind and maimed, as well as the 
young fellows just going to France—than were ever cele- 
brated in any year within men’s memory. Verse-writing 
is rampant. I have received enough odes and sonnets 
celebrating the Great Republic and the Great President 
to fill a folio volume. Several American Y. M. C. A. 
workers lately turned rampant Pacifists and had to be 
sent home. Colonial soldiers and now and then an 
American sailor turn up at our Y. M. C. A. huts as full as 
a goat and swear after the event that they never did such 
a thing before. Emotions and strain everywhere! 


Affectionately, 
Wealtae: 


332 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


In March Page, a very weary man—as these letters 
indicate—took a brief holiday at St. Ives, on the coast of 
Cornwall. As he gazed out on the Atlantic, the yearning 
for home, for the sandhills and the pine trees of North 
Carolina, again took possession of his soul. Yet it is evi- 
dent, from a miscellaneous group of letters written at this 
time, that his mind revelled in a variety of subjects, rang- 
ing all the way from British food and vegetables to the 
settlement of the war and from secret diplomacy to liter- 
ary style. 


To Mrs. Charles G. Loring 


St. Ives, Cornwall, March 3, 1918. 
Dear Kitty: 

Your mother of course needed a rest away from London 
after the influenza got done with her; and I discovered that 
I had gone stale. So she and I and the golf clubs came 
here yesterday—as near to the sunlit land of Uncle Sam 
as you can well get on this island. We look across the 
ocean—at least out into it—in your direction, but I must 
confess that Labrador is not in sight. The place is all 
right, the hotel uncommonly good, but it’s Greenlandish 
in its temperature—a very cold wind blowing. The golf 
clubs lean up against the wall and curse the weather. But 
we are away from the hordes of people and will have a 
little quiet here. It’s as quiet as any far-off place by the 
sea, and it’s clean. London is the dirtiest town in the 
world. ? 

By the way that picture of Chud came (by Col. 
Honey) along with Alice Page’s adorable little photograph. 
As for the wee chick, I see how you are already beginning 
to get a lot of fun with her. And you'll have more and 
more as she gets bigger. Give her my love and see what 
she'll say. You won’t get so lonesome, dear Kitty, with 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES vat! 


little Alice; and I can’t keep from thinking as well as hop- 
ing that the war will not go on as long as it sometimes 
seems that it must. The utter collapse of Russia has 
given Germany a vast victory on that side and it may turn 
out that this will make an earlier peace possible than would 
otherwise have come. And the Germans may be—in 
fact, must be, very short of some of the essentials of war 
in their metals or in cotton. They are in a worse internal 
plight than has been made known, [am sure. I can’t keep 
from hoping that peace may come this year. Of course, 
my guess may be wrong; but everything I hear points in 
the direction of my timid prediction. 
Bless you and little Alice, 
Affectionately, 
Wa bis BP: 


Page’s oldest son was building a house and laying out a 
garden at Pinchurst, North Carolina, a fact which ex- 
plains the horticultural and gastronomical suggestions 
contained in the following letter: 


To Ralph W. Page 


Tregenna Castle Hotel, 
St. Ives, Cornwall, England, 


March 4, 1918. 
Dear RALPH: 


Asparagus 
Celery 
Tomatoes 
Butter Beans 
Peas 

Sweet Corn 
Sweet Potatoes 


334. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Squash—the sort you cook in the rind 

Cantaloupe 

Peanuts 

Egg Plant 

Figs 

Peaches 

Pecans 

Scuppernongs 

Peanut-bacon, in glass jars 

Razor-back hams, divinely cured 

Raspberries 

Strawberries 

etc. etc. etc. etc: 

You see, having starved here for five years, my mind, as 
soon as it gets free, runs on these things and my mouth 
waters. All the foregoing things that grow can be put up 
in pretty glass jars, too. 

Add cream, fresh butter, buttermilk, fresh eggs. Only 
one of all the things on page one grows with any flavour 
here at all—strawberries; and only one or two more 
grow at all. Darned if I don’t have to confront Cabbage 
every day. I haven't yet surrendered, and I never 
shall unless the Germans get us. Cabbage and Germans 
belong together: God made ’em both the same stinking 
day. 

Now get a bang-up gardener no matter what he costs. 
Get him started. Put it up to him to start toward the 
foregoing programme, to be reached in (say) three years 
—two if possible. He must learn to grow these things 
absolutely better than they are now grown anywhere on 
earth. He must get the best seed. He must get muck 
out of the swamp, manure from somewhere, etc. etc. He 
must have the supreme flavour in each thing. Let him 
take room enough for each—plenty of room. He doesn’t 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES B55 


want much room for any one thing, but good spaces be- 
tween. 

This will be the making of the world. Talk about fairs) 
If he fails to get every prize he must pay a fine for every 
one that goes to anybody else. 

How we'll live! I can live on these things and nothing 
else. But (just to match this home outfit) I'll order tea 
from Japan, ripe olives from California, grape fruit and 
oranges from Florida. Then poor folks will hang around, 
hoping to be invited to dinner! 

Plant a few fig trees now; and pecans? Any good? 

The world is going to come pretty close to starvation 
not only during the war but for five or perhaps ten years 
afterward. An acre or two done right—divinely right— 
willsave us. An acre or two on my land in Moore County 
—no king can live half so well if the ground be got ready 
this spring and such a start made as one natural-born 
gardener can make. The old Russian I had in Garden 
City was no slouch. Do you remember his little patch 
back of the house? That far, far, far excelled anything 
in all Europe. And you'll recall that we jarred ’em and 
had good things all winter. 

This St. Ives is the finest spot in England that I’ve ever 
seen. To-day has been as good as any March day you 
ever had in North Carolina—a fine air, clear sunshine, a 
beautiful sea—looking out toward the United States; 
and this country grows—the best golf links that I’ve ever 
seen in the world, and nothing else worth speaking of but 
—tin. Tin mines are all about here. Tin and golf are 
good crops in their way, but they don’t feed the belly of 
man. As matters stand the only people that have fit 
things to eat now in all Europe are the American troops in 
France, and their food comes out of tins chiefly. Ach! 
Heaven! In these islands man is amphibious and car- 


936 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


nivorous. It rains every day and meat, meat, meat. is the 
only human idea of food. God bless us, one acre of the 
Sandhills is worth a vast estate of tin mines and golf links 
to feed the innards of 
Yours affectionately, 
Westen: 


P. S. And cornfield peas, of just the right rankness, 
cooked with just the right dryness. 

When I become a citizen of the Sandhills I propose to 
induce some benevolent lover of good food to give sub- 
stantial prizes to the best grower of each of these things 
and to the best cook of each and to the person who serves 
each of them most daintily. 

We can can and glass jar these things and let none be 
put on the market without the approval of an expert em- 
ployed by the community. Then we can get a reputation 
for Sandhill Food and charge double price. 

Wj tite 


To Arthur W. Page 


St. Ives, Cornwall, 


England, March 8, 1918. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 


Your letter, written from the University Club, is just 
come. It makes a very distinct impression on my mind 
which my own conclusions and fears have long confirmed. 
Let me put it at its worst and in very bald terms: The 
Great White Chief is at bottom pacifist, has always been 
so and is so now. Of course I do not mean a pacifist at 
any price, certainly not a cowardly pacifist. But (looked 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES ore 


at theoretically) war is, of course, an absurd way of settling 
any quarrel, an irrational way. Men and nations are 
wasteful, cruel, pigheaded fools to indulge in it. Quite 
true. But war is also the only means of adding to a 
nation’s territory the territory of other nations which they 
do not wish to sell or to give up—the robbers’ only way to 
get more space or to get booty. This last explains this 
war. Every Hohenzollern (except the present Emperor’s 
father, who reigned only a few months) since Frederick 
the Great has added to Prussian and German area of rule. 
Every one, therefore, as he comes to the throne, feels an 
obligation to make his addition to the Empire. For this 
the wars of Prussia with Austria, with Denmark, with 
France were brought on. They succeeded and won the 
additions that old William I made to the Empire. Now 
William IT must make his addition. He prepared for more 
than forty years; the nation prepared before he came to 
the throne and his whole reign has been given to making 
sure that he was ready. It’s arobber’s raid. Of course, 
the German case has been put so as to direct attention 
from this bald fact. 

Now the philosophical pacifists—I don’t mean the cow- 
ardly, yellow-dog ones—have never quite seen the war 
in this aspect. They regard it as a dispute about some- 
thing—about trade, about more seaboard, about this or 
that, whereas it is only a robber’s adventure. They want 
other people’s property. They want money, treasure, 
land, indemnities, minerals, raw materials; and they set 
out to take them. 

Now confusing this character of the war with some sort 
of rational dispute about something, the pacifists try in 
every way to stop it, so that the “‘issue’’ may be reasoned 
out, debated, discussed, negotiated. Surely the President 
tried to reach peace—tried as hard and as long as the 


338 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


people would allow him. The Germans argued away 
time with him while they got their submarine fleet built. 
Then they carried out the programme they had always 
had in mind and had never thought of abandoning. Now 
they wish to gain more time, to slacken the efforts of the 
Allies, if possible to separate them by asking for “dis- 
cussions ’—peace by “‘negotiation.””’ When you are about 
to kill the robber, he cries out, “For God’s sake, 
let’s discuss the question between us. We can come to 
terms.’’—Now here’s where the danger comes from the 
philosophical pacifist—from any man who does not clearly 
understand the nature of the war and of the enemy. To 
discuss the difference between us is so very reasonable in 
sound—so very reasonable in fact if there were a discuss- 
able difference. It is a programme that would always be 
in order except with a burglar or a robber. 

The yet imperfect understanding of the war and of the 
nature of the German in the United States, especially at 
Washington—more especially in the White House—here- 
in lies the danger. 

This little rest down here is a success. The 
weather is a disappointment—windy and cold. But to 
be away from London and away from folks—that’s much. 
Shoecraft is very good.! He sends us next to nothing. 
Almost all we’ve got is an invitation to lunch with Their 
Majesties and they’ve been good enough to put that off. 
It’s a far-off country, very fine, I’m sure in summer, and 
with most beautiful golf links. The hill is now so windy 
that no sane man can play there. 

We're enjoying the mere quiet. And your mother is 
quite well again. 

Affectionately, 
Wi ia: 


1Eugene C. Shoecraft, the Ambassador’s secretary. 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 339 


To Mrs. Charles G. Loring 


St. Ives, Cornwall, 
March 10, 1918. 


Dear Kirty: 

A week here. No news. Shoecraft says we've missed 
nothing in London. What we came for we’ve got: your 
mother’s quite well. She climbs these high hills quite 
spryly. We've had a remarkable week in this respect— 
we haven't carried on a conversation with any human be- 
ing but ourselves. I don’t think any such thing has ever 
happened before. I can stand a week, perhaps a fortnight 
of this now. But I don't care for it for any long period. 
At the bottom of this high and steep hill is the quaintest 
little town I ever saw. There are some streets so narrow 
that when a donkey cart comes along the urchins all have 
to run to the next corner or into doors. ‘There is no side- 
walk, of course; and the donkey cart takes the whole 
room between the houses. Artists take to the town, and 
they have funny little studios down by the water front in 
tiny houses built of stone in pieces big enough to construct 
a tidewater front. Imagine stone walls made of stone, 
each weighing tons, built into little houses about as big as 
your little back garden! There’s one fellow here (an 
artist) whom I used to know in New York, so small has 
the world become! 

On another hill behind us is a triangular stone monu- 
ment to John Knill. He was once mayor of the town. 
When he died in 1782, he left money to the town. If the 
town is to keep the money (as it has) the Mayor must once 
in every five years form a procession and march up to this 
monument. There ten girls, natives of the town, and 
two widows must dance around the monument to the 


340 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


playing of a fiddle and a drum, the girls dressed in white. 
This ceremony has gone on, once in five years, all this 
time and the town has old Knill’s money! 

Your mother and I—though we are neither girls nor 
widows—danced around it this morning, wondering what 
sort of curmudgeon old John Knill was. 

Don’t you see how easily we fall into an idle mood? 

Well, here’s a photograph of little Alice looking up at 
me from the table where I write—a good, sweet face she 
has. 

And you'll never get another letter from me in a time 
and from a place whereof there is so little to tell. 

Affectionately, dear Kitty, 
Wee 


To Ralph W. Page 


Tregenna Castle Hotel, 
St. Ives, Cornwall, 
March 12, 1918. 


My DEAR RALPH: 

Arthur has sent me Gardiner’s 37-page sketch of 
American-British Concords and Discords—a remarkable 
sketch; and he has reminded me that your summer plan 
is to elaborate (into a popular style) your sketch of the 
same subject. You and Gardiner went over the same 
eround, each in a very good fashion. That's a fascinating 
task, and it opens up a wholly new vista of our History 
and of Anglo-Saxon, democratic history. Much lies 
ahead of that. And all this puts it in my mind to write 
you a little discourse on style. Gardiner has no style. 
He put his facts down much as he would have noted on a 
blue print the facts about an engineering project that he 
sketched. The style of your article, which has much to 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 341 


be said for it as a magazine article, is not the best style 
for a book. 

Now, this whole question of style—well, it’s the gist 
of good writing. There’s no really effective writing without 
it. Especially is this true of historical writing. Look 
at X Y Z’s writings. He knows his American history 
and has written much on it. He’s written it as an Ohio 
blacksmith shoes a horse—not a touch of literary value 
in it all; all dry as dust—as dry as old Bancroft. 

Style is good breeding—and art—in writing. It con- 
sists of the arrangement of your matter, first; then, more, 
of the gait; the manner and the manners of your express- 
ing it. Work every group of facts, naturally and logically 
grouped to begin with, into a climax. Work every group 
up as a sculptor works out his idea or a painter, each 
sroup complete in itself. Throw out any superfluous 
facts or any merely minor facts that prevent the orderly 
working up of the group—that prevent or mar the effect 
you wish to present. 

Then, when you've got a group thus presented, go over 
what you've made of it, to make sure you’ve used your 
material and its arrangement to the best effect, taking 
away merely extraneous or superfluous or distracting facts, 
here and there adding concrete illustrations—putting in 
a convincing detail here, and there a touch of colour. 

Then go over it for your vocabulary. See that you use 
no word in a different meaning than it was used 100 years 
ago and will be used 100 years hence. You wish to use 
only the permanent words—words, too, that will be un- 
derstood to carry the same meaning to English readers in 
every part of the world. Your vocabulary must be chosen 
from the permanent, solid, stable parts of the language. 

Then see that no sentence contains a hint of obscurity. 

Then go over the words you use to see if they be the 


342 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


best. Don’t fall into merely current phrases. If you 
have a long word, see if a native short one can be put in 
its place which will be more natural and stronger. Avoid 
a Latin vocabulary and use a plain English one—short 
words instead of long ones. 

Most of all, use tdioms—English idioms of force. Say 
an agreement was “come to.’ Don’t say it was “con- 
summated.” For the difference between idioms and a 
Latin style, compare Lincoln with George Washington. 
One’s always interesting and convincing. The other is 
dull in spite of all his good sense. How most folk do 
misuse and waste words! 

Freeman went too far in his use of one-syllable words. 
It became an affectation. But he is the only man I can 
think of that ever did go too far in that direction. X— 
would have written a great history if he had had the 
natural use of idioms. As it is, he has good sense and no 
style; and his book isn’t half so interesting as it would 
have been if he had some style—some proper value of 
short, clear-cut words that mean only one thing and that 
leave no vagueness. 

You'll get a good style if you practice it. It is in your 
blood and temperament and way of saying things. But 
it’s a high art and must be laboriously cultivated. 

Yours affectionately, 
W. H. P. 


This glimpse of a changing and chastened England 
appears in a letter of this period: 


The disposition shown by an endless number of such 
incidents is something more than a disposition of gratitude 
of a people helped when they are hard pressed. All these 
things show the changed and changing Englishman. It 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 343 


has already come to him that he may be weaker than he 
had thought himself and that he may need friends more 
than he had once imagined; and, if he must have helpers 
and friends, he’d rather have his own kinsmen. He’s a 
queer “cuss,” this Englishman. But he isn’t a liar nor 
a coward nor any sort of “‘a yellow dog.” He’s true, and 
he never runs—a possible hero any day, and, when heroic, 
modest and quiet and graceful. The trouble with him 
has been that he got great world power too easily. In the 
times when he exploited the world for his own enrichment, 
there were no other successful exploiters. It became an 
easy game to him. He organized sea traffic and sea 
power. Of course he became rich—far, far richer than 
anybody else, and, therefore, content with himself: He 
has, therefore, kept much of his medizval impedimenta, 
his dukes and marquesses and all that they imply—his 
outworn ceremonies and his medieval disregard of his 
social inferiors. Nothing is well done in this Kingdom 
for the big public, but only for the classes. The railway 
stations have no warm waiting rooms. The people pace 
the platform till the train comes, and milord sits snugly 
wrapt up in his carriage till his footman announces the 
approach of the train. And occasional discontent is re- 
lieved by emigration to the Colonies. If any man be- 
comes weary of his restrictions he may go to Australia 
and become a gentleman. The remarkable loyalty of 
the Colonies has in it something of a servant’s devotion 
to his old master. 

Now this trying time of war and the threat and danger 
of extinction are bringing—have in fact already brought 
—the conviction that many changes must come. The 
first sensible talk about popular education ever heard here 
is just now beginning. Many a gentleman has made up 
his mind to try to do with less than seventeen servants 


344. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


for the rest of his life since he now has to do with less. 
Privilege, on which so large a part of life here rests, is ‘al- 
ready pretty well shot to pieces. <A lot of old baggage 
will never be recovered after this war: that’s certain: 
During a little after-dinner speech in a club not long ago 
I indulged in a pleasantry about excessive impedimenta: 
Lord Derby, Minister of War and a bluff and honest 
aristocrat, sat near me and he whispered to me—**That’s 
me.” ‘Yes,’ I said, “that’s you,” and the group about 
us made merry at the jest. The meaning of this is, they 
now joke about what was the most solemn thing in life 
three years ago. 

None of this conveys the idea I am trying te explain— 
the change in the English point of view and outlook—a 
half century’s change in less than three years, radical and 
fundamental change, too. The mother of the Duke of X 
came to see me this afternoon, hobbling on her sticks and 
feeble, to tell me of .a radiant letter she had received from 
her granddaughter who has been in Washington visiting the 
Spring Rices. “It’s all very wonderful,” said the venera- 
ble lady, ““and my granddaughter actually heard the Presi- 
dent make a speech!” Now, knowing this lady and 
knowing her son, the Duke, and knowing how this girl, 
his daughter, has been brought up, I dare swear that three 
years ago not one of them would have crossed the street 
to hear any President that ever lived. They’ve simply 
become different people. They were very genuine be- 
fore. They are very genuine now. 

It is this steadfastness in them that gives me sound hope 
for the future. They don’t forget sympathy or help or 
friendship. Our going into the war has eliminated the 
Japanese question. It has shifted the virtual control of 
the world to English-speaking peoples. It will bring into 
the best European minds the American ideal of service. 





1916-18, Assistant Sec- 


Foreign Affairs, 1918 


8 


ister of Blockade 


Min 
of State fo 


s 


| 
ry 


i 


rt Cec 


Lord Robe 


r 


reta 





General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American 
Expeditionary Force in the Great War 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 345 


It will, in fact, give us the lead and make the English in 
the long run our willing followers and allies. I don’t 
mean that we shall always have plain sailing. But I do 
mean that the direction of events for the next fifty or 
one hundred years has now been determined. 


Yet Page found one stolid opposition to his attempts 
to establish the friendliest relations between the two peo- 
ples. That offish attitude of the Washington Adminis- 
tration, to which reference has already been made, did not 
soften with the progress of events. Another experience 
now again brought out President Wilson’s coldness toward 
his allies. About this time many rather queer Americans 
—some of the ‘‘international’’ breed—were coming to Eng- 
land on more or less official missions. Page was somewhat 
humiliated by these excursions; he knew that his country 
possessed an almost unlimited supply of vivid speakers, 
filled with zeal for the allied cause, whose influence, if 
they could be induced to cross the Atlantic, would put 
new spirit into the British. The idea of having a number 
of distinguished Americans come to England and tell the 
British public about the United States and especially 
about the American preparations for war, was one that 
now occupied his thoughts. In June, 1917, he wrote his 
old friend Dr. Wallace Buttrick, extending an invitation 
to visit Great Britain as a guest of the British Government. 
Dr. Buttrick made a great success; his speeches drew 
large crowds and proved a source of inspiration to the 
British masses. So successful were they, indeed, that the 
British Government desired that other Americans of 
similar type should come and spread the message. In 
November, therefore, Dr. Buttrick returned to the 
United States for the purpose of organizing such a com- 
mittee. Among the eminent Americans whom he per- 


346 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


suaded to give several months of their time to this work 
of heartening our British allies were Mr. George E. Vincent, 
President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr. Harry Pratt 
Judson, President of Chicago University, Mr. Charles 
R. Van Hise, President of the University of Wisconsin, 
Mr. Edwin A. Alderman, President of the University of 
Virginia, Mr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Bishop Law- 
rence of Massachusetts. It was certainly a distinguished 
group, but it was the gentleman selected to be its head 
that gave it almost transcendent importance in the eyes 
of the British Government. This was ex-President Wil- 
liam H. Taft. The British lay greater emphasis upon 
official rank than do Americans, and the fact that an ex- 
President of the United States was to head this delegation 
made it almost an historic event. Mr. Taft was exceed- 
ingly busy, but he expressed his willingness to give up all 
his engagements for several months and to devote his 
energies to enlightening the British public about America 
and its purposes in the war. An official invitation was 
sent him from London and accepted. 

Inasmuch as Mr. Taft was an ex-President and a 
representative of the political party opposed to the one 
in power, he thought it only courteous that he call upon 
Mr. Wilson, explain the purpose of his mission, and obtain 
his approval. He therefore had an interview with the 
President at the White House; the date was December 12, 
1917. As soon as Mr. Wilson heard of the proposed visit 
to Great Britain he showed signs of irritation. He at 
once declared that it met with his strongest disapproval. 
When Mr. Taft remarked that the result of such an enter- 
prise would be to draw Great Britain and the United States 
more closely together, Mr. Wilson replied that he seriously 
questioned the desirability of drawing the two countries 
any more closely together than they already were. He 


A RESPITE AT ST. IVES 347 


was opposed to putting the United States in a position of 
seeming in any way to be involved with British policy. 
There were divergencies of purpose, he said, and there were 
features of the British policy in this war of which he heart- 
ily disapproved. The motives of the United States in this 
war, the President continued, “were unselfish, but the 
motives of Great Britain seemed to him to be of a less 
unselfish character.’ Mr. Wilson cited the treaty be- 
tween Great Britain and Italy as a sample of British 
statesmanship which he regarded as proving this conten- 
tion. The President’s reference to this Italian treaty 
has considerable historic value; there has been much dis- 
cussion as to when the President first learned of its 
existence, but it is apparent from this conversation with 
ex-President Taft that he must have known about it 
on December 12, 1917, for President Wilson based his 
criticism of British policy largely upon this Italian 
convention.’ 

The President showed more and more feeling about the 
matter as the discussion continued. *°*There are too many 
Englishmen,” he said, “in this country and in Washington 
now and I have asked the British Ambassador to have 
some of them sent home.”’ 

Mr. Wilson referred to the jealousy of France at the 
close relations which were apparently developing between 
Great Britain and the United States. This was another 
reason, he thought, why it was unwise to make the bonds 
between them any tighter. He also called Mr. Taft’s 
attention to the fact that there were certain elements in 
the United States which were opposed to Great Britain— 
this evidently being a reference to the Germans and the 





1As related in Chapter XXII, page 267, President Wilson was informed of the 
so-called ‘‘ secret treaties’’ by Mr. Balfour, in the course of his memorable visit 
to the White House. 


348 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE, 


Irish—and he therefore believed that any conspicuous 
attempts to increase the friendliness of the two countries 
for each other would arouse antagonism and resentment. 

As Mr. Taft was leaving he informed Mr. Wilson that 
the plan for his visit and that of the other speakers had 
originated with the American Ambassador to Great Brit- 
ain. This, however, did not improve the President’s 
temper. 

“Page,” said the President, “is really an Englishman 
and I have to discount whatever he says about the situa- 
tion in Great Britain.” 

And then he added, “I think you ought not to go, and 
the same applies to the other members of the party. I 
would like you to make my attitude on this question known 
to those having the matter in charge.” 

Despite this rebuff Dr. Buttrick and Mr. Taft were 
reluctant to give up the plan. An appeal was therefore 
made to Colonel House. Colonel House at once said 
that the proposed visit was an excellent thing and that 
he would make a personal appeal to Mr. Wilson in the 
hope of changing his mind. A few days afterward Colonel 
House called up Dr. Buttrick and informed him that 
he had not succeeded. “I am sorry,’ wrote Colonel 
House to Page, “‘that the Buttrick speaking programme 
has turned out as it has. The President was decidedly 
opposed to it and referred to it with some feeling.” 


9 


CHAPTER X XV 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 


GROUP of letters, written at this time, touch upon 
a variety of topics which were then engaging the 
interest of all countries: 


To Arthur W. Page 


London, January 19, 1918. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 


While your letter is still fresh in my mind I dictate 
the following in answer to your question about Pales- 
tine. 

It has not been settled—and cannot be, I fancy, until 
the Peace Conference—precisely what the British will do 
with Palestine, but I have what I think is a correct idea 
of their general attitude on the subject. First, of course, 
they do not propose to allow it to go back into Turkish 
hands; and the same can be said also of Armenia and pos- 
sibly of Mesopotamia. Their idea of the future of Pales- 
tine is that whoever shall manage the country, or however 
it shall be managed, the Jews shall have the same chance 
as anybody else. Of course that’s quite an advance for 
the Jews there, but their idea is not that the Jews should 
have command of other populations there or control over 
them—not in the least. My guess at the English wish, 
which I have every reason to believe is the right guess, 
is that they would wish to have Palestine internation- 
alized, whatever that means. That is to say, that it 
should have control of its own local affairs and be a free 

349 


350 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


country but that some great Power, or number of Powers, 
should see to it that none of the races that live there should 
be allowed to impose upon the other races. I don’t know 
just how such a guarantee can be given by the great 
Powers or such a responsibility assumed except by an 
agreement among two or three of them, or barely possibly 
by the English keeping control themselves; but the con- 
trol by the English after the war of the former German 
colonies will put such a large task on them that they will 
not be particularly eager to extend the area of their re- 
sponsibility elsewhere. Of course a difficult problem will 
come up also about Constantinople and the Dardanelles. 
The Dardanelles must be internationalized. 

I have never been able to consider the Zionist move- 
ment seriously. It is a mere religious sentiment which 
will express itself in action by very few people. I have 
asked a number of Jews at various times who are in favour 
of the Zionist movement if they themselves are going 
there. They always say no. The movement, therefore, 
has fixed itself in my mind as a Jewish movement in which 
no Jew that you can lay your hands on will ever take part 
but who wants other Jews to take part in it. Of course 
there might be a flocking to Palestine of Jews from Russia 
and the adjoining countries where they are not happy, 
but I think the thing is chiefly a sentiment and nothing 
else. Morgenthau! is dead right. I agree with him in 
foto. I do not think anybody in the United States need 
be the least concerned about the Zionist movement be- 
cause there isn’t a single Jew in our country such a fool 
as to go to Palestine when he can stay in the United States. 
The whole thing is a sentimental, religious, more or less 





1Mr. Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey, 1913-16, an 
American of Jewish origin who opposed the Zionist movement as un-American 
and deceptive. 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 351 


unnatural and fantastic idea and I don’t think will ever 
trouble so practical a people as we and our Jews are. 


The following memorandum is dated February 10, 1918: 


General Bliss! has made a profound and the best possi- 
ble impression here by his wisdom and his tact. The 
British have a deep respect for him and for his opinions, 
and in inspiring and keeping high confidence in us he is 
worth an army in himself. I have seen much of him and 
found out a good deal about his methods. He is simplic- 
ity and directness itself. Although he is as active and 
energetic as a boy, he spends some time by himself to 
think things out and even to say them to himself to see 
how his conclusions strike the ear as well as the mind. 
He has been staying here at the house of one of our resi- 
dent officers. At times he goes to his room and sits long 
by the fire and argues his point—out loud—oblivious to 
everything else. More than once when he was so en- 
gaged one of his officers has knocked at the door and gone 
in and laid telegrams on the table beside him and gone out 
without his having known of the officer’s entrance. Then 
he comes out and tries his conclusion on someone who 
enjoys his confidence. And then he stands by it and when 
the time comes delivers it slowly and with precision; and 
there he is; and those who hear him see that he has thought 
the matter out on all sides and finally. 

Our various establishments in London have now become 
big—the Embassy proper, the Naval and Army Head- 
quarters, the Red Cross, the War Trade Board’s repre- 
sentatives, and now (forthwith) the Shipping Board, be- 
sides Mr. Crosby of the Treasury. The volume of work is 





1American member of the Supreme War Council. Afterward member of the 
American Commission to Negotiate Peace. 


952 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


enormous and it goes smoothly, except for the somewhat 
halting Army Headquarters, the high personnel of which 
is now undergoing a change; and that will now be all right. 
I regularly make the rounds of all the Government De- 
partments with which we deal to learn if they find our men 
and methods effective, and the rounds of all our centres 
of activity to find whether there be any friction with 
the British. The whole machine moves very well. For 
neither side hesitates to come to me whenever they strike 
even small snags. All our people are at work on serious 
tasks and (so far as I know) there are now none of those 
despicable creatures here who used during our neutrality 
days to come from the United States on peace errands 
and what-not to spy on the Embassy and me (their in- 
quiries and their correspondence were catalogued by the 
police). I have been amazed at the activity of some of 
them whose doings I have since been informed of. 

We now pay this tribute to the submarines—that we 
have entered the period of compulsory rations. There is 
enough to eat in spite of the food that has gone to feed 
the fishes. But no machinery of distribution to a whole 
population can be uniformly effective. The British 
worker with his hands is a greedy feeder and a sturdy 
erowler and there will be trouble. But I know no reason 
to apprehend serious trouble. 

The utter break-up of Russia and the German present 
occupation of so much of the Empire as she wants have 
had a contrary effect on two sections of opinion here, as I 
interpret the British mind. On the undoubtedly enor- 
mously dominant section of opinion these events have 
only stiffened resolution. They say that Germany now 
must be whipped to a finish. Else she will have doubled 
her empire and will hold the peoples of her new territory 
as vassals without regard to their wishes and the war lord 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 353 


caste will be more firmly seated than ever before. If her 
armies be literally whipped she’ll have to submit to the 
Allies’ terms, which will dislodge her from overlordship over 
these new unwilling subjects—and she can be dislodged 
in no other way. This probably means a long war, now 
that after a time she can get raw materials for war later 
and food from Rumania and the Ukraine, etc. This will 
mean a fight in France and Belgium till a decisive victory 
is won and the present exultant German will is broken. 

The minority section of public opinion—as I judge a 
small minority—has the feeling that such an out-and-out 
military victory cannot be won or is not worth the price; 
and that the enemies of Germany, allowing her to keep her 
Eastern accretions, must make the best terms they can 
in the East; that there’s no use in running the risk of 
Italy’s defeat and defection before some scrt of bargain 
could be made about Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and Serbia. 
Of course this plan would leave the German warlordship 
intact and would bring no sort of assurance of a prolonged 
peace. It would, too, leave European Russia at least to 
German mercy, and would leave the Baltic and the Black 
Seas practically wholly under German influence. As for 
the people of Russia, there seems small chance for them 
in this second contingency. The only way to save them 
is to win a decisive victory. 

As matters stand to-day Lord Lansdowne and his 
friends (how numerous they are nobody knows) are the 
loudest spokesmen for such a peace as can be made. But 
it is talked much of in Asquith circles that the time may 
come when this policy will be led by Mr. Asquith, in a 
form somewhat modified from the Lansdowne formula. 
Mr. Asquith has up to this time patriotically supported 
the government and he himself has said nothing in public 
which could warrant linking his name with an early peace- 


354. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


seeking policy. But his friends openly and incessantly 
predict that he will, at a favourable moment, take this 
cue. I myself can hardly believe it. Political victory 
in Great Britain doesn’t now lie in that direction. 

The dominant section of opinion is much grieved at 
Russia’s surrender, but they refuse to be discouraged by it. 
They recall how Napoleon overran most of Europe, and the 
French held practically none of his conquests after his fall. 

Such real political danger as exists here—if any exists, 
of which I am not quite sure—comes not only now mainly 
of this split in public opinion but also and to a greater 
degree from the personal enemies of the present govern- 
ment. Lloyd George is kept in power because he is the 
most energetic man in sight—by far. Many who support 
him do not like him nor trust him—except that nobody 
doubts his supreme earnestness to win the war. On all 
other subjects he has enemies of old and he makes new 
ones. His intense and superb energy has saved him in 
two notable crises. His dismissal of Sir William Robert- 
son' has been accepted in the interest of greater unity of 
military control, but it was a dangerous rapids that he 
shot, for he didn’t do it tactfully. Yet there’s a certain 
danger to the present powers in the feeling that some 
of them are wearing out. Parliament itself—an old one 
now—is thought to have gone stale. Bonar Law is over- 
worked and tired; Balfour is often said to be too philosoph- 
ical and languid; but, when this feeling seems in danger 
of taking definite shape, he makes a clearer statement than 
anybody else and catches on his feet. The man of new 
energy, not yet fagged, is Geddes,’ whose frankness carries 
conviction. 





1Sir Henry Wilson had recently succeeded Sir William Robertson as Chief of 
the Imperial General Staff. 


First Lord of the Admiralty. 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 355 


To the President 


London, March 17, 1918. 
Dear Mr. PRESIDENT: 


The rather impatient and unappreciative remarks made 
by the Prime Minister before a large meeting of preachers 
of the “‘free”’ churches about a League of Nations reminds 
me to write you about the state of British opinion on that 
subject. What Lloyd George said to these preachers is 
regrettable because it showed a certain impatience of 
mind from which he sometimes suffers; but it is only fair 
to him to say that his remarks that day did not express a 
settled opinion. For on more than one previous occasion 
he has spoken of the subject in a wholly different tone— 
much more appreciatively. On that particular day he had 
in mind only the overwhelming necessity to win the war— 
other things, all other things must wait. In a way this is 
his constant mood—the mood to make everybody feel 
that the only present duty is to win the war. He has 
been accused of almost every defect in the calendar except 
of slackness about the war. Nobody has ever doubted 
his earnestness nor his energy about that. And the uni- 
versal confidence in his energy and earnestness is what 
keeps him in office. Nobody sees any other man who can 
push and inspire as well as he does. It would be a mis- 
take, therefore, to pay too much heed to any particular 
utterance of this electrical creature of moods, on any sub- 
ject. 

Nevertheless, he hasn’t thought out the project of a 
league to enforce peace further than to see the difficul- 
ties. He sees that such a league might mean, in theory 
at least, the giving over in some possible crisis the com- 
mand of the British Fleet to an officer of some other na- | 
tionality. That’s unthinkable to any red-blooded son of 


356 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


these islands. Seeing a theoretical possibility even of 
raising such a question, the British mind stops and refuses 
to go further—refuses in most cases even to inquire seriously 
whether any such contingency is ever likely to come. 

The British Grand Fleet, in fact, is a subject that stands 
alone in power and value and in difficulties. It classifies 
itself with nothing else. Since over and over again it has 
saved these islands from invasion when nothing else could 
have saved them and since during this war in particular 
it has saved the world from German conquest—as every 
Englishman believes—it lies in their reverence and their 
sratitude and their abiding convictions as a necessary 
and perpetual shield so long as Great Britain shall endure. 
If the Germans are thrashed to a frazzle (and we haven’t 
altogether done that yet) and we set about putting the 
world in order, when we come to discuss Disarmament, 
the British Fleet will be the most difficult item in the world 
to dispose of. It isnot only a Fact, with a great and saving 
history, it is also a sacred Tradition and an Article of Faith. 

The first reason, therefore, why the British general mind 
has not firmly got hold on a Jeague is the instinctive fear 
that the formation of any league may in some conceivable 
way affect the Grand Fleet. Another reason is the general 
inability of a somewhat slow public opinion to take hold 
on more than one subject at a time or more than one 
urgent part of one subject. The One Subject, of course, 
is winning the war. Since everything else depends on that, 
everything else must wait on that. 

The League, therefore, has not taken hold on the public 
imagination here as it has in the United States. The 
Jarge mass of the people have not thought seriously about 
it: it has not been strongly and persistently presented to 
the mass of the people. There is no popular or general 
organization to promote it. There is even, here and there, 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 307 


condemnation of the idea. The (London) Morning Post, 
for example, goes out of its way once in a while to show 
the wickedness of the idea because, so it argues, it will in- 
volve the sacrifice, more or less, of nationality. But the 
Morning Post is impervious to new ideas and is above all 
things critical in its activities and very seldom construc- 
tive. The typical Tory mind in general sees no good in the 
idea. The typical Tory mind is the insular mind. 

On the other hand, the League idea is understood as a 
necessity and heartily approved by two powerful sections 
of public opinion—(1) the group of public men who have 
given attention to it, such as Bryce, Lord Robert Cecil, 
and the like, and (2) some of the best and strongest lead- 
ers of Labour. ‘There is good reason to hope that when- 
ever a fight and an agitation is made for a League these two 
sections of public opinion will win; but an agitation and a 
fight must come. Lord Bryce, in the intervals of his work 
as chairman of a committee to make a plan for the reor- 
ganization of the House of Lords, which, he remarked to 
me the other day, “involves as much labour as a Govern- 
ment Department,’’ has fits of impatience about pushing 
a campaign for a league, and so have a few other men. 
They ask me if it be not possible to have good American 
public speakers come here—privately, of course, and in 
no way connected with our Government nor speaking for 
it—to explain the American movement for a League in 
order to arouse a public sentiment on the subject. 

Thus the case stands at present. 

Truth and error alike and odd admixtures of them come 
in waves over this censored land where one can seldom 
determine what is true, before the event, from the 
newspapers. “News” travels by word of mouth, and 
information that one can depend on is got by personal 
inquiry from sources that can be trusted. 


358 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


There is a curious wave of fear just now about what 
Labour may do, and the common gossip has it that there 
is grave danger in the situation. I can find no basis for 
such a fear. I have talked with labour leaders and | 
have talked with members of the government who know 
most about the subject. There is not a satisfactory situa- 
tion—there has not been since the war began. There has 
been a continuous series of labour “ crises,’’ and there have 
been a good many embarrassing strikes, all of which have 
first been hushed up and settled—at least postponed. 
One cause of continuous trouble has been the notion held 
by the Unions, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, 
that the employers were making abnormal profits and 
that they were not getting their due share. There have 
been and are also other causes of trouble. It was a con- 
tinuous quarrel even in peace times. But I can find no 
especial cause of fear now. Many of the Unions have had 
such advances of wages that the Government has been 
severely criticized for giving in. Just lately a large wing ~ 
of the Labour Party put forth its war aims which—with 
relatively unimportant exceptions—coincide with the best 
declarations made by the Government’s own spokesmen. 

Of course, no prudent man would venture to make 
dogmatic predictions. There have been times when for 
brief intervals any one would have been tempted to fear 
that these quarrels might cause an unsatisfactory con- 
clusion of the war. But the undoubted patriotism of the 
British workman has every time saved the situation. 
While a danger point does lie here, there is no reason to be 
more fearful now than at any preceding time when no 
especial trouble was brewing. This wave of gossip and 
fear has no right to sweep over the country now. 

Labour hopes and expects and is preparing to win the 
next General Election—whether with good reason or not 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 359 


I cannot guess. But most men expect it to win the 
Government at some time—most of them after the war. 
I recall that Lord Grey once said to me, before the war 
began, that a general political success of the Labour Party 
was soon to be expected. 

Another wave which, I hear, has swept over Rome as 
well as London is a wave of early peace expectation. The 
British newspapers have lately been encouraging this by 
mysterious phrases. Some men here of good sense and 
sound judgment think that this is the result of the so- 
called German “peace offensive,’ which makes the pres- 


ent the most dangerous period of the war. 
Webi eee 


To David F. Houston? 


London, March 23, 1918. 
My pEAR Houston: 

It is very kind of you indeed to write so generously 
about the British visitors who are invading our sacred 
premises, such as the Archbishop of York, and it is good 
to hear from you anyhow about any subject and I needn’t 
say that it is quite a rare experience also. I wish you 
would take a little of your abundant leisure and devote it 
to good letters to me. 

And in some one of your letters tell me this.—The 
British send over men of this class that you have written 
about to see us, but they invite over here—and we permit 
to come—cranks on prohibition, experts in the investiga- 
tion of crime, short-haired women who wish to see how 
British babies are reared, peace cranks and freaks of other 
kinds.2, Our Government apparently won't let plain, 





1Secretary of Agriculture. 
*See Chapter XXIV- 


360 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


honest, normal civilians come over, but if a fellow comes 
along who wants to investigate some monstrosity then 
one half of the Senate, one half of the House of Represen- 
tatives, and a number of the executive offices of the Gov- 
ernment give him the most cordial letters. Now there are 
many things, of course, that I don’t know, but it has been 
my fate to have a pretty extensive acquaintance with 
cranks of every description in the United States. I 
don’t think there is any breed of them that didn’t haunt 
my Office while I was an editor. Now I am surely pun- 
ished for all my past sins by having those fellows descend 
on me here. I know them, nearly all, from past experi- 
ence and now just for the sake of keeping the world as 
quiet as possible I have to give them time here far out of 
proportion to their value. 

Now, out of your great wisdom, I wish you would ex- 
plain to me why the deuce we let all this crew come over 
here instead of sending a shipload of perfectly normal, 
dignified, and right-minded gentlemen. These thug re- 
formers!—Baker will be here in a day or two and if I can 
remember it [ am going to suggest to him that he round 
them all up and put them in the trenches in France where 
those of them who have so far escaped the gallows ought 
to be put. 

I am much obliged to have the illuminating statement 
about our crops. I am going to show it to certain gentle- 
men here who will be much cheered by it. By gracious, 
you ought to hear their appreciation of what we are doing! 
We are not doing it for the sake of their appreciation, but 
if we were out to win it we could not do it better. Down 
at bottom the Englishman is a good fellow. He has his 
faults but he doesn’t get tired and he doesn’t suffer spasms 
of emotion. 

Give my love to Mrs. Houston, and do sit down and 


From a painting by Irving R. Wiles 


Admiral William Sowden Sims, Commander of American naval 
forces operating in European waters during the Great War 








e 


the Plymouth 


t of 


. the farewell gif 


lL to \ 


Iver model of the Mayflower 


Sl 


A 


ge 


ir. Pa 


. 


2OUNC!I 


C 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 36] 


write me a good long letter—a whole series of them, in 
fact. 
Believe me, always most heartily yours, — 
Watrer Hinss Pace. 


To Frank L. Polk 


: London, March 22, 1918. 
Dear Mr. Poi: 

You are good enough to mention the fact that the Em- 
bassy has some sort of grievance against the Department. 
Of course it has, and you are, possibly, the only man that 
can remove it. It is this: You don’t come here to see the 
war and this government and these people who are again 
saving the world as we are now saving them. I thank 
Heaven and the Administration for Secretary Baker’s 
visit. It is a dramatic moment in the history of the race, 
of democracy, and of the world. The State Department 
has the duty to deal with foreign. affairs—the especial 
duty—and yet no man in the State Department has been 
here since the war began. This doesn’t look pretty and 
it won’t look pretty when the much over-worked ‘future 
historian”’ writes it down in a book. Remove that 
orievance. 

The most interesting thing going on in the world to-day 
—a thing that in History will transcend the war and be 
reckoned its greatest gain—is the high leadership of 
the President in formulating the struggle, in putting 
its aims high, and in taking the democratic lead in the 
world, a lead that will make the world over—and in 
taking the democratic lead of the English-speaking folk. 
Next most impressive to that is to watch the British 
response to that lead. Already they have doubled the 
number of their voters, and even more important definite 


362 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


steps in Democracy will be taken. My aim—and it’s 
the only way to save the world—is to lead the British 
in this direction. They are the most easily teachable 
people in our way of thinking and of doing. Of 
course everybody who works toward such an aim 
provokes the cry from alot of fools among us who 
accuse him of toadying to the English and of “accepting 
the conventional English conclusion.” They had as 
well talk of missionaries to India accepting Confucius 
or Buddha. ‘Their fleet has saved us four or five times. 
It’s about time we were saving them from this bloody 
Thing that we call Europe, for our sake and for 
theirs. 

The bloody Thing will get us all if we don’t fight our 
level best; and it’s only by our help that we'll be saved. 
That clearly gives us the leadership. Everybody sees 
that. Everybody acknowledges it. The President au- 
thoritatively speaks it—speaks leadership on a higher level 
than it was ever spoken before to the whole world. As 
soon as we get this fighting job over, the world procession 
toward freedom—our kind of freedom—will begin under 
our lead. This being so, can’t you delegate the writing of 
telegrams about “facilitating the license to ship poppy 
seed to McKesson and Robbins,” and come over and see 
big world-forces at work? 

I cannot express my satisfaction at Secretary Baker’s 
visit. It was historic—the first member of the Cabinet, 
I think, who ever came here while he held office. He 
made a great impression and received a hearty wel- 
come. 

That’s the only grievance I can at the moment unload 
on you. We're passing out of our old era of isolation. 
These benighted heathen on this island whom we'll yet 
save (since they are well worth saving) will be with us as 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 363 


we need them in future years and centuries. Come, help 
us heighten this fine spirit. 
Always heartily yours, 
Wa.rerR Hines Pace. 


P. S. You'd see how big our country looks from a dis- 
tance. It’s gigantic, I assure you. 


The above letter was written on what was perhaps the 
darkest day of the whole war. The German attack on | 
the Western Front, which had been long expected, had 
now been launched, and, at the moment that Page was 
penning this cheery note to Mr. Polk, the German armies 
had broken through the British defenses, had pushed their 
lines forty miles ahead, and, in the judgment of many 
military men, had Paris almost certainly within their 
erasp. A great German gun, placed about seventy miles 
from the French capital, was dropping shells upon the 
apparently doomed city. This attack had been regarded 
as inevitable since the collapse of Russia, which had en- 
abled the Germans to concentrate practically all their 
armies on the Western Front. 

The world does not yet fully comprehend the devas- 
tating effect of this apparently successful attack upon 
the allied morale. British statesmen and British soldiers 
made no attempt to conceal from official Americans the 
desperate state of affairs. It was the expectation that 
the Germans might reach Calais and thence invade Eng- 
land. The War Office discussed these probabilities most 
freely with Colonel Slocum, the American military attaché. 
The simple fact was that both the French and the British 
armies were practically bled white. 

“For God’s sake, get your men over!”’ they urged Gen- 
eral Slocum. ‘You have got to finish it.” 


364. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


Page was writing urgently to President Wilson to the 
same purpose. Send the men and send them at once. 
‘“T pray God,” were his solemn words to Mr. Wilson, 
“that you will not be too late!”’ 

One propitious event had taken place at the same time as 
the opening of the great German offensive. Mr. New- 
ton D. Baker, the American Secretary of War, had left 
quietly for France in late February, 1918, and had reached 
the Western Front in time to obtain a first-hand sight of 
the great March drive. No visit in history has ever been 
better timed, and no event could have better played into 
Page’s hands. He had been urging Washington to send 
all available forces to France at the earliest possible date; 
he knew, as probably few other men knew, the extent to 
which the Allies were depending upon American troops to 
give the final blow to Germany; and the arrival of Sec- 
retary Baker at the scene of action gave him the oppor- 
tunity to make a personal appeal. Page immediately 
communicated with the Secretary and persuaded him to 
come at once to London for a consultation with British 
military and political leaders. The Secretary spent only 
three days in London, but the visit, brief as it was, had 
historic consequences. He had many consultations with 
the British military men; he entered into their plans with 
enthusiasm; he himself received many ideas that after- 
ward took shape in action, and the British Government 
obtained from him first-hand information as to the prog- 
ress of the American Army and the American deter- 
mination to codperate to the last man and the last dollar. 
‘Baker went straight back to France,’ Page wrote to his 
son Arthur, “and our whole codperation began.”’ 

Page gave a dinner to Mr. Baker at the Embassy on 
March 23rd—two days after the great March drive had 
begun. This occasion gave the visitor a memorable 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 365 


glimpse of the British temperament. Mr. Lloyd George, 
Mr. Balfour, Lord Derby, the War Secretary, General 
Biddle, of the United States Army, and Admiral Sims were 
the Ambassador’s guests. Though the mighty issues then 
overhanging the world were not ignored in the conversation 
the atmosphere hardly suggested that the existence of the 
British Empire, indeed that of civilization itself, was that 
very night hanging in the balance. Possibly it was the 
general sombreness of events that caused these British 
statesmen to find a certain relief in jocular small talk and 
reminiscence. For the larger part of the evening not 
a word was said about the progress of the German armies 
in France. Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour, seated on 
opposite sides of the table, apparently found relaxation in 
reviewing their political careers and especially their old- 
time political battles. They would laughingly recall occa- 
sions when, in American parlance, they had put each other 
“in a hole”’’; the exigencies of war had now made these two 
men colleagues in the same government, but the twenty 
years preceding 1914 they had spent in political antago- 
nism. Page’s guests on this occasion learned much politi- 
cal history of the early twentieth century, and the mutual 
confessions of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour gave 
these two men an insight into each others’ motives and 
manceuvres which was almost as revealing. ‘*‘ Yes, you 
caught me that time,’ Mr. Lloyd George would say, and 
then he would counter with an episode of a political battle 
in which he had got the better of Mr. Balfour. The whole 
talk was lively and bantering, and accompanied with 
much laughter; and all this time shells from that long- 
distance gun were dropping at fifteen minute intervals 
upon the devoted women and children of Paris and the 
Germans were every hour driving the British back in dis- 
order. At times the conversation took a more philosophic 


366 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


turn. Would the men present like to go back twenty- 
five years and live their lives all over again? The practi- 
cally unanimous decision of every man was that he would 
not wish to do so. 

All this, of course, was merely on the surface; despite 
the laughter and the banter, there was only one thing which 
engrossed the Ambassador’s guests, although there were 
not many references to it. That was the struggle which 
was then taking place in France. At intervals Mr. Lloyd 
George would send one of the guests, evidently a secre- 
tary, from the room. The latter, on his return, would 
whisper something in the Prime Minister’s ear, but more 
frequently he would merely shake his head. Evidently 
he had been sent to obtain the latest news of the 
battle. 

At one point the Prime Minister did refer to the great 
things taking place in France. 

“This battle means one thing,’ he said. “That is a 
generalissimo.”’ 

“Why couldn’t you have taken this step long ago?” 
Admiral Sims asked Mr. Lloyd George. 

The answer came like a flash. 

“Tf the cabinet two weeks ago had suggested placing 
the British Army under a foreign general, it would have 
fallen. Every cabinet in Europe would also have fallen, 
had it suggested such a thing.” 


Memorandum on Secretary Baker's visit 


Secretary Baker’s visit here, brief as it was, gave the 
heartiest satisfaction. So far as I know, he is the first 
member of an American Cabinet who ever came to Eng- 
land while he held office, as Mr. Balfour was the first 
member of a British Cabinet who ever went to the United 
States while he held office. The great governments of 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 367 


the English-speaking folk have surely dealt with one an- 
other with mighty elongated tongs. Governments of 
democracies are not exactly instruments of precision. But 
they are at least human. But personal and human neg- 
lect of one another by these two governments over so long a 
period is an astonishing fact in our history. The wonder 
is that we haven’t had more than two wars. And it is no 
wonder that the ignorance of Englishmen about America 
and the American ignorance of England are monumen- 
tal, stupendous, amazing, passing understanding. I have 
on my mantelpiece a statuette of Benjamin Franklin, 
an excellent and unmistakable likeness which was made 
here during his lifetime; and the inscription burnt on its 
base is Geo. Washington. It serves me many a good turn 
with my English friends. I use it as a measure of their 
ignorance of us. Of course this is a mere little error of a 
statuette-maker, an error, moreover, of a hundred years 
ago. But it tells the story of to-day also. If I had to 
name the largest and most indelible impression that 
has been made on me during my five years’ work 
here, I should say the ignorance and aloofness of the 
two peoples—not an ignorance of big essential facts 
but of personalities and temperaments—such as never 
occur except between men who had never seen one 
another. 

But I was writing about Mr. Baker’s visit and I’ve 
got a long way from that. I doubt if he knows him- 
self what gratification it gave; for these men here have 
spoken to me about it as they could not speak to 
him. 

Here is an odd fact: For sixty years, so far as I know, 
members of the Administration have had personal ac- 
quaintance with some of the men in power in Salvador, 
Costa Rica, Venezuela, Peru, etc., etc., and members of 


868 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


the British Government have had personal acquaintance 
with some men in authority in Portugal, Serbia, Monte- 
negro and Monte Carlo; but during this time (with the 
single exception of John Hay) I think no member of any 
Administration had a real personal acquaintance while he 
held office with any member of the British Government 
while he held office, and vice versa—till Mr. Balfour’s 
visit. Suspicion grows out of ignorance. The longer I 
live here the more astonished I become at the fundamental 
ignorance of the British about us and of our fundamental 
ignorance about them. So colossal is this ignorance that 
every American sent here is supposed to be taken in, to 
become Anglophile; and often when one undertakes to 
enlighten Englishmen about the United States one be- 
comes aware of a feeling inside the English of unbelief, as 
if he said, ““Oh, well! you are one of those queer people 
who believe in republican government.’ All this is sim- 
ply amazing. Poor Admiral Sims sometimes has a sort 
of mania, a delusion that nobody at Washington trusts 
his judgment because he said seven or eight years ago 
that he liked the English. Yet every naval officer who 
comes here, I understand, shares his views about practi- 
cally every important naval problem or question. I don’t 
deserve the compliment (it’s a very high one) that some of 
my secretaries sometimes pay me when they say that I 
am the only man they know who tries to tell the whole 
truth to our Government in favour of the Englishman as 
well as against him. It is certain that American public 
opinion is universally supposed to suspect any American 
who tries to do anything with the British lion except to 
twist his tail—a supposition that I never believed to be 
true.—But it is true that the mutual ignorance is as 
high as the Andes and as deep as the ocean. Personal 
acquaintance removes it and nothing else will. 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 369 


To Arthur W. Page 


American Embassy, 


London, April 7, 1918. 
DEAR ARTHUR: 


I daresay you remember this epic: 


Old Morgan’s wife made butter and cheese; 
Old Morgan drank the whey. 

There came a wind from West to East 
And blew Old Morgan away. 


I’m Old Morgan and your mother got ashamed of my 
wheyness and made the doctor prescribe cream for me. 
There’s never been such a luxury, and anybody who sup- 
poses that I am now going to get fat and have my cream 
stopped simply doesn’t know me. So, you see why I’m 
intent on shredded wheat biscuits. That’s about the best 
form of real wheat that will keep. And there’s no getting 
real wheat-stuff, pure and simple, in any other form. 

There’s no use in talking about starving people—except 
perhaps in India and China. White men can live on any- 
thing. The English could fight a century on cabbage and 
Brussels sprouts. I’ve given up hope of starving the 
Germans. A gut of dogmeat or horse flesh and a potato 
will keep them in fighting trim forever. I’ve read daily 
for two years of impending starvation across the Rhine; 
but I never even now hear of any dead ones from hunger. 
Cold:steel or lead is the only fatal dose for them. 

Therefore I know that shredded wheat will carry me 
through. 

You'll see, I hope, from the clippings that I enclose 
that I’m not done for yet anyhow. ‘Two speeches a day 
is no small stunt; and I did it again yesterday—hand 


370 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


running; and I went out to dinner afterward. It wasa 
notable occasion—this celebration of the anniversary of 
our coming into the war.! 

Nobody here knows definitely just what to fear from 
the big battle; but everybody fears more or less. It’s a 
critical time—very. I am told that that long-range 
gunning of Paris is the worst form of frightfulness yet 
tried. The shells do not kill a great many people. But 
their falling every fifteen minutes gets on people’s nerves 
and they can’t sleep. I hear they are leaving Paris in 
great numbers. Since the big battle began and the Ger- 
mans have needed all their planes and more in France, 
they've let London alone. But nobody knows when they 
will begin again. 

Nobody knows any future thing about the war, and 
everybody faces a fear. 

Secretary Baker stayed with me the two days and three 
nights he was here. He made a good impression but he 
received a better one. He now knows something about 
the war. I had at dinner to meet him: 

Lloyd George, Prime Minister. 

Balfour, Foreign Secretary. 

The Chief of Staff. 

Lord Derby, War Secretary. 

General Biddle, U.S. A., in command in London. 

Admiral Sims, U. 8. N. 

The talk was to the point—good and earnest. Baker went 
straight back to France and our whole codperation began. 
With the first group of four he had conferences besides 
for two days. His coming was an admirable move. 
Yours affectionately, 
W. H. P. 





‘This meeting, on April 6, 1918, was held at the Mansion House. Page and 
Mr. Balfour were the chief speakers. 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 371] 


To Ralph W. Page 


London, April 13, 1918. 
DEAR RALPH: 

Your cheery letters about entertaining governors, 
planting trees and shrubbery and your mother’s little 
orchard give us much pleasure. The Southern Pines 
paper brings news of very great damage to the peach crop. 
I hope it is much exaggerated. Is it? 

We haven't any news here, and I send you my weekly 
note only to keep my record clear. The great battle—no 
one talks or thinks of anything else. We have suffered 
and still suffer a good deal of fear and anxiety, with real 
reason, too. But the military men are reassuring. Yet 
I don’t know just how far to trust their judgment or to 
share their hopes. Certainly this is the most dangerous 
situation that modern civilization was ever put in. 
if we can keep them from winning any great objective, 
like Paris or a channel port, we ought to end the war — 
this year. If not, either they win or at the least pro- 
long the war indefinitely. It’s a hazardous and trying 
time. 

There were never such casualties on either side as now. 
Such a bloody business cannot keep up all summer. But be- 
fore everybody is killed or a decisive conclusion is reached, 
the armies will, no doubt, dig themselves in and take a 
period of comparative rest. People here see and feel the 
creat danger. But the extra effort now may come too 
late. Still we keep up good hope. The British are hard 
to whip. They never give up. And as for the French 
army, I always remember Verdun and keep my courage 
up. 
The wounded are coming over by the thousand. We 
are incomparably busy and in great anxiety about the 


272 THE LIFE AND LETTERS. OF WALTER H. PAGE 


result (though still pretty firm in the belief that the Ger- 
mans will lose), and luckily we keep very well. 
Affectionately, 


W ties 


To Ralph W. Page 


London, April 7, 1918. 
DEAR RALPH: 

There used to be a country parson down in Wake 
County who, when other subjects were talked out, always 
took up the pleasing topic of saving your soul. That’s 
the way your mother and I do—with the subject of going 
home. We talk over the battle, we talk over the boys, we 
talk over military and naval problems, we discuss the 
weather and all the babies, and then take up politics, and 
talk over the gossip of the wiseacres; but we seldom finish 
a conversation without discussing going home. And we 
reach just about as clear a conclusion on our topic as the 
country parson reached on his. I’ve had the doctors 
going over me (or rather your mother has) as an expert 
accountant goes over your books; and I tried to bribe 
them to say that I oughtn’t to continue my arduous 
duties here longer. They wouldn’t say any such thing. 
Thus that device failed—dead. It looks as if I were 
destined for a green old age and no martyr business at 
all. 

All this is disappointing; and I don’t see what to do but 
to go on. I can’t keep from hoping that the big battle 
may throw some light on the subject; but there’s no telling 
when the big battle will end. Nothing ends—that’s the 
trouble. I sometimes feel that the war may never end, 
that it may last as the Napoleonic Wars did, for 20 years; 
and before that time we'll all have guns that shoot 100 
miles. We can stay at home and indefinitely bombard 


GETTING THE AMERICAN TROOPS TO FRANCE 373 


the enemy across the Rhine—have an endless battle at 
long range. 

So, we stick to it, and give the peach trees time to grow 
up. 

We had a big day in London yesterday—the anniver- 
sary of our entry into the war. I send you some news- 
paper clippings about it. 

The next best news is that we have a little actual sun- 
shine—a very rare thing—and some of the weather is now 
almost decent. 

Affectionately, 


CHAPTER XXVI 


LAST DAW S INUEN GUAWD 


N SPITE of the encouraging tone of the foregoing 
letters, everything was not well with Page. All through 

the winter of 1917-1918 his associates at the Embassy had 
noticed a change for the worse in his health. He seemed 
to be growing thinner; his face was daily becoming more 
haggard; he tired easily, and, after walking the short dis- 
tance from his house to his Embassy, he would drop list- 
lessly into his chair. His general bearing was that of a 
man who was physically and nervously exhausted. It 
was hoped that the holiday at St. Ives would help him; 
that he greatly enjoyed that visit, especially the westward 
—homeward—outlook on the Atlantic which it gave him, 
his letters clearly show; there was a temporary improve- 
ment also in his health, but only a temporary one. The 
last great effort which he made in the interest of the com- 
mon cause was Secretary Baker’s visit; the activities which 
this entailed wearied him, but the pleasure he obtained 
from the resultant increase in the American participation 
made the experience one of the most profitable of his life. 
Indeed, Page’s last few months in England, though full of 
sad memories for his friends, contained little but satis- 
faction for himself. He still spent many a lonely evening 
by his fire, but his thoughts were now far more pleasurable 
than in the old Lusitania days. The one absorbing sub- 
ject of contemplation now was that America was “in.” 
His country had justified his deep confidence. The Ameri- 
can Navy had played a determining part in defeating the 

374 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 375 


submarine, and American shipyards were turning out 
merchant ships faster than the Germans were destroying 
them. American troops were reaching France at a rate 
which necessarily meant the early collapse of the German 
Empire. Page’s own family had responded to the call 
and this in itself was a cause of great contentment to 
a sick and weary man. The Ambassador’s youngest 
son, Frank, had obtained a commission and was serv- 
ing in France; his son-in-law, Charles G. Loring, was 
also on the Western Front; while from North Carolina 
Page’s youngest brother Frank and two nephews 
had sailed for the open battle line. The bravery and 
success of the American troops did not surprise the 
Ambassador but they made his last days in England very 
happy. 

Indeed, every day had some delightful experience for 
Page. The performance of the Americans at Cantigny 
especially cheered him. The day after this battle he and 
Mrs. Page entertained Mr. Lloyd George and other guests 
at lunch. The Prime Minister came bounding into the 
room with his characteristic enthusiasm, rushed up to 
Mrs. Page with both hands outstretched and shook hands 
joyously. 

“Congratulations!” he exclaimed. “The Americans 
have done it! They have met the Prussian guard and 
defeated them!”’ 

Mr. Lloyd George was as exuberant over the achieve- 
ment as a child. 

This was now the kind of experience that had become 
Page’s daily routine. Lively as were his spirits, however, 
his physical frame was giving way. In fact Page, though 
he did not know it at the time, was suffering from a speci- 
fic disease—nephritis; and its course, after Christmas of 
1917, became rapid. His old friend, Dr. Wallace Buttrick, 


376 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


had noted the change for the worse and had attempted to 
persuade him to go home. 

“Quit your job, Page,” he urged. ‘“‘ You have other big 
tasks waiting you at home. Why don’t you go back?” 

‘‘No—no—not now.” 

“But, Page,” urged Dr. Buttrick, “you are going to lay 
down your life.” 

‘“T have only one life to lay down,” was the reply. “I 
can’t quit now.” 


To Mary E. Page} 


London, May 12, 1918. 
DEAR Mary: 

You'll have to take this big paper and this paint brush 
pen—it’s all the pen these blunt British have. This is to 
tell you how very welcome your letter to Alice is—how 
very welcome, for nobody writes us the family news and 
nothing is somuch appreciated. Ill try to call the shorter 
roll of us in the same way: 

After a miserable winter we, too, are having the rare 
experience of a little sunshine in this dark, damp world of 
London. The constant confinement in the city and in 
the house (that’s the worst of 1t—no outdoor life or fresh 
air) has played hob with my digestion. It’s not bad, but 
it’s troublesome, and for some time I’ve had the feeling of 
being one half well. It occurred to me the other day that 
I hadn’t had leave from my work for four years, except 
my short visit home nearly two years ago. I asked for two 
months off, and I’ve got it. We are going down by the 
shore where there is fresh air and where I can live outdoors 
and get some exercise. We have a house that we can get 
there and be comfortable. To get away from London 





1Of Aberdeen, N. C., the Ambassador’s sister. 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND Wire 


when the weather promises to be good, and to get away 
from people seemed a joyous prospect. I can, at any time 
I must, come to London in two hours. 

The job’s too important to give up at this juncture. 
This, then, is the way we can keepit going. I’ve no such 
hard task now as I had during the years of our neutrality, 
which, praise God! I somehow survived, though I am 
now suffering more or less from the physical effects of 
that strain. Yet, since | have had the good fortune to 
win the confidence of this Government and these people, I 
feel that [ ought to keep on now until some more or less 
natural time to change comes. 

Alice keeps remarkably well—since her influenza late 
in the winter; but arest away from London is really needed 
as much by her as by me. They work her to death. In 
a little while she is to go, by the invitation of the Govern- 
ment and the consent of the King, to christen a new Brit- 
ish warship at Newcastle. It will be named the “ Eagle.” 
Meantime Ill be trying to get outdoor life at Sand- 
wich. 

Yesterday a regiment of our National Army marched 
through the streets of London and were reviewed by the 
King and me; and the town made a great day of it. While 
there is an undercurrent of complaint in certain sections 
of English opinion because we didn’t come into the war 
sooner, there is a very general and very genuine apprecia- 
tion of everything we have done and of all that we do. 
Nothing could be heartier than the welcome given our 
men here yesterday. Nor could any men have made 
a braver or better showing than they made. They made 
us all swell with pride. 

They are coming over now, as you know, in great 
quantities. There were about 8,000 landed here last week 
and about 30,000 more are expected this week. I think 


378 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


that many more go direct to France than come through 
England. On their way through England they do not 
come to London. Only twice have we had them here, 
yesterday and one day last summer when we had a parade 
of a regiment of engineers. For the army London is ona 
sidetrack—is an out of the way place. For our navy, of 
course, it’s the European headquarters, since Admiral 
Sims has his headquarters here. We thus see a good 
many of our sailors who are allowed to come to London on 
leave. A few days ago I[ had a talk with a little bunch of 
them who came from one of our superdreadnaughts in 
the North Sea. They had just returned from a patrol 
across to the coast of Norway. “Bad luck, bad luck,” 
they said, “‘on none of our long patrol trips have we seen 
a single Hun ship!” 

About the war, you know as much as I know. There 
is a general confidence that the Allies will hold the Ger- 
mans in their forthcoming effort to get to Calais or to 
Paris. Yet there is an undercurrent of fear. Nobody 
knows just how to feel about it. Probably another pro- 
digious onslaught will be made before you receive this 
letter. It seems to me that we can make no intelligent 
guess until this German effort is finished in France—no 
guess about the future. If the Germans get the French 
ports (Calais, for example) the war will go on indefinitely. 
If they are held back, it may end next autumn or winter 
—partly because of starvation in Germany and partly 
because the Germans will have to confess that they can’t 
whip our armies in France. But, even then, since they 
have all Russia to draw on, they may keep going for a long 
time. One man’s guess is as good as another’s. 

One sad thing is certain: we shall at once begin to have 
heavy American casualties. Our Red Cross and our 
army here are getting hospitals ready for such American 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 379 


wounded as are brought over to England—the parts of 
our army that are fighting with the British. 

We have a lot of miserable politics here which interfere 
with the public feeling. The British politician is a worse 
yellow dog than the American—at times he is, at least; 
and we have just been going through such a time. An- 
other such time will soon come about the Irish. 

Well, we have an unending quantity of work and wear 
—no very acute bothers but a continuous strain, the 
strain of actual work, of uneasiness, of seeing people, of 
uncertainty, of great expense, of doubt and fear at times, 
of inability to make any plans—all which is only the com- 
mon lot now all over the world, except that most persons 
have up to this time suffered incomparably worse than we. 
And there’s nothing to do but to go on and on and on and 
to keep going with the stoutest hearts we can keep up till 
the end do at last come. But the Germans now (as the 
rest of us) are fighting for their lives. ‘They are desperate 
and their leaders care nothing for human life. 

The Embassy now is a good deal bigger than the whole 
State Department ever was in times of peace. I have 
three buildings for offices, and a part of our civil force oc- 
cupies two other buildings. Even a general supervision 
of so large a force is in itself a pretty big job. The army 
and the Navy have each about the same space as the Em- 
bassy proper. Besides, our people have huts and inns and 
clubs and hospitals all over the town. Even though there 
be fewet vexing problems than there were while we were 
neutral, there is not less work—on the contrary, more. 
Nor will there be an end to it for a very long time—long 
after my time here. The settling of the war and the be- 
ginning of peace activities, whenever these come, will in- 
volve a great volume of work. But I’ve no ambition to 
have these things in hand. As soon as a natural time of 


380 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


relief shall come, I'll go and be happier in my going than 
you or anybody else can guess. 

Now we go to get my digestion stiffened up for another 
long tug—unless the Germans proceed forthwith to knock 
us out—which they cannot do. 

With my love to everybody on the Hill, 

Affectionately yours, 
W. H. P. 


Mr. and Mrs. Waldorf Astor—since become Viscount 
and Viscountess Astor—had offered the Pages the use of 
their beautiful seaside house at Sandwich, Kent, and it 
was the proposed vacation here to which Page refers in 
this letter. He obtained a six weeks’ leave of absence and 
almost the last letters which Page wrote from England 
are dated from this place. These letters have all the 
qualities of Page at his best: but the handwriting is a sad 
reminder of the change that was progressively taking place 
in his physical condition. It is still a clear and beautiful 
script, but there are signs of a less steady hand than the 
one that had written the vigorous papers of the preceding 
four years. 


Memorandum 
Sandwich, Kent, Sunday, 19 May, 1918. 


We're at Rest Harrow and it’s a fine, sunny early 
spring Carolina day. The big German drive has evi- 
dently begun its second phase. We hear the guns dis- 
tinctly. We see the coast-guard aeroplanes at almost any 
time o’ day. What is the mood about the big battle? 

The soldiers—British and French—have confidence in 
their ability to hold the Germans back from the Channel 
and from Paris. Yet can one rely on the judgment of 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 381 


soldiers? ‘They have the job in hand and of course they 
beheve in themselves. While one does not like in the 
least to discount their judgment and their hopefulness, 
for my part I am not quile so sure of their ability to make 
sound judgments as I wish I were. The chances are in 
favour of their success; but—-suppose they should have to 
yield and give up Calais and other Channel ports? Well, 
they’ve prepared for it as best they can. They have made 
provision for commandeering most of the hotels in London 
that are not yet taken over—for hospitals for the wounded 
now in France. 

And the war would take on a new phase. Whatever 
should become of the British and American armies, the 
Germans would be no nearer having England than they 
now are. They would not have command of the sea. 
The combined British and American fleets could keep 
every German ship off the ocean and continue the blockade 
by sea—indefinitely; and, if the peoples of the two coun- 
tries hold fast, a victory would be won at last—at sea. 


To Ralph W. Page 


Rest Harrow, Sandwich, Kent. 
May 19, 1918. 
DEAR RALPH: 

I felt very proud yesterday when I read T. R.’s good 
word in the Outlook about your book.! If I had written 
what he said myself—I mean, if I had written what I 
think of the book—I should have said this very thing. 
And there is one thing more I should have said, viz.:—All 
your life and all my life, we have cultivated the opinion 
at home that we had nothing to do with the rest of the 








1“ Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy,” by Ralph W. Page, 1918. 


382 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


world, nothing to do with Europe in particular—and in 
our political life our hayseed spokesmen have said this 
over and over again till many people, perhaps most people, 
came really to believe that it was true. Now this aloof- 
ness, this utterly detached attitude, was a pure invention 
of the shirt-sleeve statesman at home. I have long con- 
cluded, for other reasons as well as for this, that these men 
are the most ignorant men in the whole world; more igno- 
rant—because they are viciously ignorant—than the Negro 
boys who act as caddies at Pinehurst; more ignorant than 
the inmates of the Morganton Asylum; more ignorant 
than sheep or rabbits or idiots. They have been the 
chief hindrances of our country—worse than traitors, in 
effect. It is they, in fact, who kept our people ignorant 
of the Germans, ignorant of the English, ignorant of our 
own history, ignorant of ourselves. Now your book, 
without mentioning the subject, shows this important 
fact clearly, by showing that our aloofness has all been a 
fiction. We've been in the world—and right in the middle 
of the world—the whole time. 

And our public consciousness of this fact has enormously 
slipped back. Take Franklin, Madison, Monroe, Jeffer- 
son; take Hay, Root—and then consider some of our 
present representatives! One good result of the war and 
of our being in it will be the restoration of our foreign con- 
sciousness. Every one of the half million, or three million, 
soldiers who go to France will know more about foreign 
affairs than all Congress knew two years ago. 

A stay of nearly five years in London (five years ago 
to-day I was on the ship coming here) with no absence 
long enough to give any real rest, have got my digestion 
wrong. I’ve therefore got a real leave for two months. 
Your mother and I have a beautiful house here that has 
been lent to us, right on the Channel where there’s nothing 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 383 


worth bombing and where as much sunshine and warmth 
come as come anywhere in England. We got here last 
night and to-day is as fine an early spring day as you ever 
had in the Sandhills. I shall golf and try to find me an old 
horse to ride, and I'll stay out in the sunshine and try to 
get the inside machinery going all right. Wemay havea 
few interruptions, but I hope not many, if the Germans 
leave us alone. Your mother has got to go to Newcastle to 
christen a new British warship—a compliment the Ad- 
miralty pays her “to bind the two nations closer together”’ 
etc. etc. And I’ve got to go to Cambridge to receive an 
LL. D. for the President. Only such things are allowed 
to interrupt us. And we are very much hoping to see 
Frank here. 

We are in sound of the battle. We hear the big guns 
whenever we go outdoors. A few miles down the beach 
is a rifle range and we hear the practice there. Almost 
any time of day we can hear aeroplanes which (I pre- 
sume) belong to the coast guard. There’s no danger of 
forgetting the war, therefore, unless we become stone 
deaf. But this decent air and sunshine are blessings of 
the highest kind. I never became so tired of anything 
since I had the measles as I’ve become of London. 

My Lord! it sounded last night as if we had jumped from 
the frying pan into the fire. Just as we were about to go 
to bed the big gun on the beach—just outside the fence 
around our yard—about 50 yards from the house, began 
its thundering belch—five times in quick succession, 
rattling the windows and shaking the very foundation of 
things. Then after a pause of a few minutes, another 
round of five shots. Then the other guns all along the 
beach took up the chorus—farther off—and the inland 
guns followed. They are planted all the way to London 
—ninety miles. For about two hours we had this roar 


384 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


and racket. There was an air raid on, and there were 
supposed to be twenty-five or thirty German planes on 
their way to London. I hear that it was the worst raid 
that London has had. Two of them were brought down 
—that’s the only good piece of news I’ve heard about it. 
Well, we are not supposed to be in danger. They fly over 
us on the way to bigger game. At any rate I'll take the 
risk for this air and sunshine. ‘Trenches and barbed wire 
run all along the beach—I suppose to help in case of an 
invasion. But an invasion is impossible in my judgment. 
Holy Moses! what a world!—the cannon in the big battle 
in France roaring in our ears all the time, this cannon at 
our door likely to begin action any night and all the rest 
along the beach and on the way to London, and this is 
what we call rest! The world is upside down, all crazy, 
all murderous; but we’ve got to stop this barbaric assault, 
whatever the cost. 

Ray Stannard Baker is spending a few days with us, 
much to our pleasure. 

With love to Leila and the babies, 

Yours affectionately, 
WE 


To Arthur W. Page 


Rest Harrow, Sandwich Beach, 
Sandwich, Kent, England. 
May 20, 1918. 


DEAR ARTHUR: 

I can’t get quite to the bottom of the anti- 
English feeling at Washington. God knows, this people 
have their faults. Their social system and much else here 
is medieval. I could write several volumes in criticism 
of them. So I could also in criticism of anybody else. 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 385 


But Jefferson’s' letter is as true to-day as it was when he 
wrote it. One may or may not have a lot of sentiment 
about it; but, without sentiment, it’s mere common sense, 
mere prudence, the mere instinct of safety to keep close 
to Great Britain, to have a decent respect for the good 
qualities of these people and of this government. Cer- 
tainly it is a mere perversity—lost time—lost motion, 
lost everything—to cherish a dislike and a distrust of them 
—a thing that I cannot wholly understand. While we are, 
I fear, going to have trade troubles and controversies, my 
feeling is, on the whole, in spite of the attitude of our of- 
ficial life, that an increasing number of our people are 
waking up to what England has done and is and may be 
depended on to do. Isn’t that true? 

We've no news here. We see nobody who knows any- 
thing. I am far from strong—the old stomach got tired 
and I must gradually coax it back to work. That’s 
practically my sole business now for a time, and it’s a 
slow process. But it’s coming along and relief from see- 
ing hordes of people is as good as medicine. 

Affectionately, 
W. #H. P. 


To the President 


7 Sandwich, May 24, 1918. 
Dear Mr. PRESIDENT: 

Your speeches have a cumulative effect in cheering up 
the British. As you see, if you look over the mass of 
newspaper clippings that I send to the Department, or 
have them looked over, the British press of all parties and 





1The reference is to a letter written in 1823 by Thomas Jefferson to President 
Monroe at the time when the Holy Alliance was threatening the independence 
of South America. ‘‘With Great Britain,” Jefferson wrote, ‘““we should most sedu- 
lously cherish a cordial friendship and nothing would tend more to knit our 
affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause.” 


386 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


shades of opinion constantly quote them approvingly and 
eratefully. They have a cumulative effect, too, in clear- 
ing the atmosphere. Take, for instance, your declara- 
tion in New York about standing by Russia. All the 
allied governments in Europe wish to stand by Russia, 
but their pressing business with the war, near at hand, 
causes them in a way to forget Russia; and certainly the 
British public, all intent on the German “drive” in France 
had in a sense forgotten Russia. You woke them up. 
And your “ Why set a limit to the American Army?” has 
had a cheering effect. As leader and spokesman of the 
enemies of Germany—by far the best trumpet-call spokes- 
man and the strongest leader—your speeches are worth 
an army in France and more, for they keep the proper 
moral elevation. All this is gratefully recognized here. 
Public opinion toward us is wholesome and you have a 
“good press” in this Kingdom. In this larger matter, all 
is well. The English faults are the failings of the smaller 
men—about smaller matters—not of the large men nor of 
the public, about large matters. 

In private, too, thoughtful Englishmen by their fears 
pay us high tribute. I hear more and more constantly 
such an opinion as this: “You see, when the war is over, 
you Americans will have much the largest merchant fleet. 
You will have much the largest share of money, and Eng- 
land and France and all the rest of the world will owe you 
money. You will have a large share of essential raw mate- 
rials. You will have the machinery for marine insurance 
and for foreign banking. You will have much the largest 
volume of productive labour. And you will know the 


world as you have never known it before. What then is 


going to become of British trade)” 
The best answer I can give is: “Adopt American 
methods of manufacture, and the devil take the hind- 


——e C—O 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 387 


most. There will be for a long time plenty for everybody 
to do; and let us make sure that we both play the game 
fairly: that’s the chief matter to look out for.’ That’s 
what I most fear in the decades following the end of the 
war—trade clashes. 

The Englishman’s pride will be hurt. I recall a speech 
made to me by the friendliest of the British—Mr. Balfour 
himself: “I confess that as an Englishman it hurts my 
pride to have to borrow so much even from you. But I will 
say that I'd rather be in your debt than in anybody else’s.”’ 


To Edward M. House 


May 27, 1918. 
My pEAR House: 

. . | can write in the same spirit of the Labour 
Chane which left for home last week. Nobody has been 
here from our side who had a better influence than they. 
They emphatically stuck by their instructions and took 
pleasure, against the blandishments of certain British 
Socialists, in declaring against any meeting with anybody 
from the enemy countries to discuss “ peace-by-negotia- 
tion”’ or anything else till the enemy is whipped. They 
made admirable speeches and proved admirable represen- 
tatives of the bone and sinew of American manhood. 
They had dead-earnestness and good-humour and hard 
horse-sense. 

This sort of visit is all to the good. Great good they 
do, too, in the present English curiosity to see and hear 
the right sort of frank, candid Americans. Nobody who 
hasn’t been here lately can form an idea of the eagerness 
of all classes to hear and learn about the United States. 
There never was, and maybe never will be again, such a 
chance to inform the British and—to help them toward a 
right understanding of the United States and our people. 


388 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


We are not half using the opportunity. There seems to 
be a feeling on your side the ocean that we oughtn’t to 
send men here to “lecture” the British. No typical, 
earnest, sound American who has been here has ‘‘lectured”’ 
the British. They have all simply told facts and in- 
structed them and won their gratitude and removed mis- 
conceptions. For instance, I have twenty inquiries a 
week about Dr. Buttrick. He went about quietly during 
his visit here and talked to university audiences and to 
working-men’s meetings and he captured and fascinated 
every man hemet. He simply told them American facts, 
explained the American spirit and aims and left a grateful 
memory everywhere. Buttrick cost our Government 
nothing: he paid hisown way. But if he had cost as much 
as a regiment it would have been well spent. The people 
who heard him, read American utterances, American his- 
tory, American news in a new light. And most of his talk 
was with little groups of men, much of it even in private 
conversation. He did no orating or “lecturing.” A 
hundred such men, if we had them, would do more for a 
perfect understanding with the British people than any- 
thing else whatsoever could do. 
Yours sincerely, 
Water H. Pace. 


To Arthur W. Page 


Sandwich, May 27, 1918. 
DEAR ARTHUR: | 

I do get tired—my Lord! how tired!—not of 
the work but of the confinement, of the useless things I 
have to spend time on, of the bad digestion that has over- 
taken me, of London, of the weather, of absence from you 
all—of the general breaking up of the world, of this mad 
slaughter of men. But, after all, this is the common lot 


a alee, oe ie 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 389 


now and I am grateful for a chance to do what I can. 
That’s the true way to look at it. 

Worry? I don’t worry about anything except 
the war in general and this mad world so threatened by 
these devil barbarians. And I have a feeling that, when 
we get a few thousand flying machines, we’ll put an end 
to that, alas! with the loss of many of our brave boys. I 
hear the guns across the channel as I write—an unceasing 
boom! boom! boom! That’s what takes the stuff out of 
me and gets my inside machinery wrong. Still, I’m grad- 
ually getting even that back to normal. Golf and the 
poets are fine medicine. [read Keats the other day, with 
entire forgetfulness of the guns. Here we have a com- 
fortable house, our own servants (as many as we need), a 
beautiful calm sea, a perfect air and for the present ideal 
weather. There’s nobody down here but Scottish sol- 
diers. We've struck up a pleasant acquaintance with 
them; and some of the fellows from the Embassy come 
down week ends. Only the murderous guns keep their 
eternal roar. 

Thanks, thanks, a thousand thanks, old man. It’ll all 
work out right. 
| I look at it in this way: all’s well that ends well. 
We are now doing our duty. That’s enough. These 
things don’t bother me, because doing our duty now is 
worth a million years of past errors and shortcomings. 

Your mother’s well and spry—very, and the best com- 
pany in the world. We're having a great time. 

Bully for the kids! Kiss ’em for me and Mollie too. 

Affectionately, 
Wits Hie 


Make Shoecraft tell you everything. He’s one of the 
best boys and truest in the world. 


390 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


To Ralph W. Page 


Rest Harrow, Sandwich, Kent. 
June 7, 1918. 

My pEAR RALPH: 
I have all along cherished an expectation of 
RO things—(1) That when we did get an American Army 
by conscription, if it should remain at war long enough to 
learn the game, it would become the best army that the 
world ever saw, for the simple reason that its ranks would 
contain more capable men than any other country has 
ever produced. The proof of this comes at once. Even 
our new and raw troops have astonished the veterans of 
the French and British armies and (I have no doubt) of 
the German Army also. It'll be our men who will whip 
the Germans, and there are nobody else’s men who could 
do it. We've already saved the Entente from collapse 
by our money. We'll save the day again by our fighting 
men. That is to say, we'll save the world, thank God; and 
I fear it couldn’t have been saved in any other way. (2) 
Since the people by their mood command and compel 
efficiency, the most efficient people will at last (as recent 
events show) get at the concrete jobs, in spite of any- 
body’s preferences or philosophy. And this seems at last 
to be taking place. What we have suffered and shall 
suffer is not failure but delays and delays and bunglings. 
But they’ve got to end by the sheer pressure of the people’s 
earnestness. ‘These two things, then, are all to the good. 
I get the morning papers here at noon. And to-day I 
am all alone. Your mother went early on her journey 
to launch a British battleship. I haven’t had a soul to 
speak to all day but my servants. At noon, therefore, I 
was rather eager for the papers. I saw at a glance that 
a submarine is at work off the New Jersey coast! It’s an 


a s! & ae a Te 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 391 


awful thing for the innocent victims, to be drowned. But 
their deaths have done us a greater service than 100 times as 
many lives lost in battle. If anybody lacked earnestness 
about the war, I venture to guess that he doesn’t lack it any 
longer. If the fools would now only shell some innocent 
town on the coast, the journey to Berlin would be shortened. 

If the Germans had practised a chivalrous humanity in 
their war for conquest, they’d have won it. Nothing on 
earth can now save them; for the world isn’t big enough to 
hold them and civilized people. Nor is there any room 
for pacifists till this grim business is done. 

Affectionately, 
Whe: 


The last piece of writing from Sandwich is the following 
memorandum: 
Sandwich, Kent. 
June 10, 1918. 


The Germans continue to gain ground in France—more 
slowly, but still they gain. The French and British papers 
now give space to plans for the final defense—the des- 
perate defense—of Paris. The Germans are only forty 
miles away. Slocum, military attaché, thinks they will 
get it and he reports the same opinion at the War Office— 
because the Germans have taken such a large number of 
guns and so much ammunition. Some of these guns were 
meant for the American troops, and they cannot now be 
replaced in time if the German advance continues. But 
I do not know enough facts at first hand to form an opin- 
ion. But, if Paris be taken, the war will go on a long time 
—unless the English-speaking rulers make a compromise. 
And, then, in another form—and forms—it'll go on in- 
definitely —There has beea no more perilous or uncer- 
tain or anxious time than now. 


392 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


The United States too late, too late, too late: what if it 
should turn out so? 


But it did not turn out so. Even while Page was pen- 
ning these lines great events were taking place in France 
and the American troops were having a large share in 
them. In June the Americans stopped the German 
troops at Belleau Wood—a battle which proved the mettle 
of these fresh levies not only for the benefit of the Germans 
but of the Allies as well. ‘Thus Page had the great satis- 
faction of returning to London while the city was ringing 
with the praise of these achievements. He found that 
the atmosphere had materially changed since he had last 
been in the British capital; when he had left for Sandwich 
there had been a general expectation that the Germans 
would get Paris or the Channel ports; now, however, there 
was every confidence of victory. Greatly as Page re- 
joiced over the new prospect, however, the fight at 
Belleau Wood brought him his last great sorrow. His 
nephew, Allison M. Page, of Aberdeen, North Carolina, 
the son of his youngest brother, Frank, lost his life in that 
engagement. At first the young man was reported 
““missing’’; the investigation set afoot by the Ambassador 
for some time brought no definite information. One of 
the most pathetic of Page’s papers is a brief note addressed 
by him to Allison Page, asking him for news: “‘It’s been 
a long time since we heard from you,” Page wrote his 
nephew. “Write how it goes with you. Affection- 
ately, Uncle Wat.” After travelling over a considerable 
part of France, this note found its way back to the Em- 
bassy. The boy—he was only 19—had been killed in 
action near Belleau Wood, on June 25th, while leading 
his detachment in an attack on a machine gun. Citations 
and decorations for gallantry in action were given post- 


— we” | =e 6S 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 393 


humously by General Pershing, Marshal Pétain, Major- 
General Omar Bundy, and Major-General John A. LeJeune. 

And now the shadows began to close in rapidly on 
Page. In early July Major Frank C. Page, the Ambassa- 
dor’s youngest son, came over from France. <A. brief 
glance at his father convinced him that he was dying. 
By this time the Ambassador had ceased to go to the Chan- 
cery, but was transacting the most imperative business 
propped up in a chair at home. His mind was possessed 
by two yearnings: one was to remain in London until 
the end of the war, the other was to get back to his 
childhood home in North Carolina. Young Page urged 
his father to resign, but the weary invalid insisted on 
sticking to his post. On this point it seemed impossible 
to move him. Knowing that his brother Arthur had 
great influence with his father, Frank Page cabled, asking 
him to come to England immediately. Arthur took the 
first boat, reaching London late in July. 

The Ambassador’s two sons then gently pressed upon 
their father the fact that he must resign. Weak as he 
was, the Ambassador was still obdurate. 

“No,” he said. “It’s quitting on the job. I must see 
the war through. I can’t quit until it’s over.” 

But Sir William Osler, Page’s physician and devoted 
friend, exercised his professional authority and insisted on 
the resignation. Finally Page consented. 


To the President 


American Embassy, London, 


August 1, 1918. 
My pEAR Mr. PRESIDENT: 


I have been struggling for a number of months against 
the necessity to write you this note; for my doctors now 
advise me to give up all work for a period—my London 


394. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


doctor says for six months. I have a progressive digestive 
trouble which does not yield to the usual treatment. It’s 
the war, five London winters, and the unceasing labour 
which is now the common lot. I am ashamed to say that 
these have brought me to something near a breakdown. 
I have had Sir William Osler as well as two distinguished 
London physicians for several months. The digestive 
trouble has brought other ills in its train; and I am assured 
that they will yield to freedom from responsibility and 
complete rest for a time in a dry, warm climate and that 
they are not likely to yield to anything else. 

I see nothing else to do then but to bow to the inevitable 
and to ask you to be kind enough to relieve me and to ac- 
cept my resignation to take effect as soon as I can go to 
Washington and make a somewhat extended report on 
the work here, which, I hope, will be of some use to the 
Department; and I ought to go as soon as possible—say, 
in September. I cannot tell you how great my disap- 
pointment is that this request has become necessary. 

If the world and its work were so organized that we 
could do what we should like to do, I should like a leave 
of absence till winter be broken and then to take up my 
duties here again tull the war end. But that, of course, is 
impracticable. And it is now a better time to change 
Ambassadors than at any time since the war began. My 
five years’ service has had two main phases—the difficult 
period of our neutrality and the far easier period since we 
came into the war. But when the war ends, I fear that 
there will be again more or less troublesome tasks arising 
out of commercial difficulties. 

But for any reasonable period the Embassy’s work for- 
tunately can now go on perfectly well with Mr. Laughlin 
as Chargé—until my successor can get here. The Foreign 
Office like him, he is persona grata to all other Departments 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND — 395 


of the Government, and he has had a long experience; and 
he is most conscientious and capable. And the organiza- 
tion is in excellent condition. 

_ I venture to ask you to have a cable message sent to me 
(to be deciphered by me alone). It will require quite a 
little time to pack up and to get away. 

I send this, Mr. President, with more regret than I can 
express and only after a struggle of more than six months 
to avoid it. 

Yours sincerely, 
Water H. Pace. 


Arthur Page took his father to Banff, in Scotland, 
for a little rest in preparation for the voyage. From this 
place came Page’s last letter to his wife: 


To Mrs. Page 


Duff House, Banff, Scotland. 


, Sunday, September 2, 1918. 
My DEAR: 


; I’ve put the period of our life in London, in my 
sitinl as closed. That epoch is ended. And I am glad. 
It was time it ended. My job (that job) is done. From 
the letters that Shoecraft has sent me and from what the 
papers say, I think I couldn’t have ended it more happily 
—or at a better time. I find myself thinking of the winter 
down South—of a Thanksgiving Day dinner for the older 
folks of our family, of a Christmas tree for the kids, of 
frolics of all sorts, of Rest, of some writing (perhaps not 
much), going over my papers with Ralph—that’s what he 
wants, you know; etc., etc., etc. 

And I’ve got toeat more. J myself come into my think- 
ing and planning in only two ways—(1) I’m going to have 





38906 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


a suit like old Lord N.’s and (2) I’m going to get all the. 
good things to eat that there are! ! 

Meantime, my dear, how are you? Don’t you let this 
getting ready wear you out. Let something go undone 
rather. Work Miss Latimer and the boys and the moy- 
ing and packing men, and Petherick and the servants. 
Take it very easy yourself. 

Nine and a half more days here—may they speed swiftly. 
Comfortable as I am, ’'m mortal tired of being away from 
you—dead tired. | 

Praise God it’s only 94 days. If it were 92, I should 
not stand it, but break for home prematurely. 

Yours, dear Allie, with all my love, 


Wa Hee: 
On August 24th came the President’s reply: 


I have received your communication of August Ist. It 
caused me great regret that the condition of your health 
makes it necessary for you to resign. Under the circum- 
stances I do not feel I have the right to insist on such a 
sacrifice as your remaining in London. Your resignation 
is therefore accepted. As you request it will take effect 
when you report to Washington. Accept my congratu- 
lations that you have no reason to fear a permanent im- 
pairment of your health and that you can resign knowing 
that you have performed your difficult duties with dis- 
tinguished success. 

Wooprow WILSON. 


The news of Page’s resignation inspired tributes from 
the British press and from British public men such as have 
been bestowed upon few Americans. The London Times 
headed its leader “A Great Ambassador” and this note 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 397 


was echoed in all sections of Great Britain. The part of 
Page’s career which Englishmen chiefly recalled was his 
attitude during the period of neutrality. This, the news- 
papers declared, was Page’s great contribution to the cause. 
The fact that it had had such far-reaching influences on his- 
tory was the one especially insisted on. His conciliatory 
and skillful behaviour had kept the United States and Great 
Britain friends at a time when a less tactful ambassador 
might easily have made them enemies; the result was that, 
when the time came, the United States could join forces 
against the common enemy, with results that were then 
daily unfolding on the battlefields of France. “I really 
believe,” wrote the Marquess of Crewe, ‘“‘that there were 
several occasions when we might have made it finally im- 
possible for America to join us in the war; that these 
passed by may have been partly due to some glimmering 
of common sense on our part, with Grey as its main ex~ 
ponent; but it was more largely owing to your patience and 
courtesy and to the certainty which the Foreign Office 
always enjoyed that its action would be set before the 
Secretary of State in as favourable a light as it conscien- 
tiously could be.”’ That, then, was Page’s contribution to 
the statesmanship of this crisis—that of holding the two 
countries together so that, when the time came, the 
United States could join the Allies. A mass of private 
letters, all breathing the same sentiment, began to pour in 
on Page. There was hardly an illustrious name in Great 
Britain that was not represented among these leave-tak- 
ings. As illustrating the character and spirit animating 
them, the following selections are made: 


From the King 


The information communicated to me _ yesterday 
through Mr. Laughlin of Your Excellency’s resignation of 


398 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


the Post of Ambassador and the cause of this step fill me 
with the keenest regret. During your term of office in 
days of peace and of war your influence has done much to 
strengthen the ties of friendship and good-will which 
unite the two English-speaking nations of the world. I 
trust your health will soon be restored and that we may 
have the pleasure of seeing you and Mrs. Page before your 
departure. 
GeorcE R. I. 


From the Prime Minister 


10, Downing Street, Whitehall, S. W. L 
30th August, 1918. 
My DEAR AMBASSADOR: 


It is with the deepest regret that my colleagues and I 
have received the news that you have been forced by ill 
health to resign your office and that the President has 
consented to your relinquishing your ambassadorial 
duties. We are sorry that you are leaving us, all the more. 
because your tenure of office has coincided with one of the 
greatest epochs in the history of our two countries and 
of the world, and because your influence and counsel 
throughout this difficult time have been of the utmost 
value to us all. 

The power for good or evil which can be exerted by the 
occupant of your high position is at all times necessarily 
very great. That our peoples are now fighting side by 
side in the cause of human freedom and that they are 
manifesting an ever growing feeling of cordiality to one 
another is largely attributable to the exceptional wisdom 
and good-will with which you have discharged your duties. 
For the part you have played during the past five years in 
bringing about this happy result we owe you our lasting 
gratitude. 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 399 


May I add that while you have always firmly presented 
the point of view of your own country, you have succeeded 
in winning, not only the respect and admiration of official 
circles, but the confidence, and I can say without hesita- 
tion, the affection of all sections of our people? It will be 
with universal regret that they will learn that, owing to 
the strain of the great responsibilities you have borne, 
you are no longer to remain among us. I earnestly 
trust that a well-earned rest will speedily restore you to 
complete health, and that you have many years of public 
service still in store for you. 

I should like also to say how much we shall miss Mrs. 
Page. She has won areal place in all our hearts. Through 
her unfailing tact, her genuine kindliness, and her unvary- 
ing readiness to respond to any call upon her time and 
energy, she has greatly contributed to the success of your 
ambassadorship. 

Ever sincerely, 
D. Liuoyp GEORGE. 


From Viscount Grey of Fallodon 


Glen Innerleithen, Scotland. 
September 2, 1918. 
Dear Mr. Pace: 

I have been out of touch with current events for a few 
days, but yesterday I read the two articles in the Tumes 
on your retirement. I am very grieved to think that you 
are going. There was not a word of eulogy in the Times 
articles that was not under rather than over-stated, and 
reflecting thus I thought how rare it is in public life to have 
an occasion that justifies the best that can be said. But it 
is so now, and I am filled with deep regret that you are 
going and with deep gratitude that you came to us and 
were here when the war broke out and subsequently. If 


400 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


the United States had been represented here by any one 
less decided as to the right and wrong of the war and less 
firm and courageous than yourself, the whole of the re- 
lations between your country and ours would have been 
in peril. And if the two countries had gone apart instead 
of coming together the whole fate of the world would be 
very different from what I hope it will now be. 

I have often thought that the forces behind public 
affairs are so tremendous that individuals have little real, 
even when much apparent, influence upon the course of 
events. But in the early years of the war I think every- 
thing might have gone wrong if it had not been that cer- 
tain men of strong moral conviction were in certain places. 
And you were preéminently one of these. President 
Wilson I am sure was another, though I know him only 
through you and Colonel House and his own public utter- 
ances. Even so your influence must have counted in his 
action, by your friendship with him as well as by the fact 
of your being the channel through which communications 
passed between him and us. 

I cannot adequately express what it was to me per- 
sonally in the dark days of 1914, 1915, and 1916 to know 
how you felt about the great issues involved in the war. 

I go to Fallodon at the end of this week and come to 
London the first week of September—if you and Mrs. 
Page have not left by then I hope I may see you. I long 
to do so before you go. I wish you may recover perfect 
health. My eyesight continues to fail and I shall soon 
be absolutely dependent upon other eyes for reading 
print. Otherwise I feel as well as a schoolboy, but it is 
depressing to be so well and yet so crippled in sight. 

Please do not trouble to answer this letter—you must 
have too many letters of the kind to be able to reply to 
them separately—but if there is a chance of my seeing 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 401 


you before you go please let me have a message to say 
when and where. 
Yours sincerely, 
GREY OF F. 


A few months before his resignation Page had received 
a letter from Theodore Roosevelt, who was more familiar 
than most Americans with Page’s work in London. This 
summed up what will be probably the judgment of history 
upon his ambassadorship. The letter was in reply to one 
written to the Ex-President, asking him to show hospital- 
ity to the Archbishop of York,! who was about to visit the 
United States. 


(Office of the Metropolitan Magazine) 
342 Fourth Ave., New York, 
March Ist, 1918. 
My pEAR Mr. AMBASSADOR: 

I am very much pleased with your letter, and as soon 
as the Archbishop arrives, he will be addressed by me 
with all his titles, and I will get him to lunch with me or 
dine with me, or do anything else he wishes! I shall do it 
for his own sake, and still more, my dear fellow, I shall do 
it for the sake of the Ambassador who has represented 
America in London during these trying years as no other 
Ambassador in London has ever represented us, with the 
exception of Charles Francis Adams, during the Civil 
War. 

Faithfully yours, 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 


The seriousness of Page’s condition was not understood 
in London; consequently there were many attempts to do 


‘See Vol. II, page 307. 


402 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


him honour in which he was unable to participate. Cus- 
tom demands that a retiring Ambassador shall go to 
Windsor Castle to dine and to sleep; but King George, 
who was very solicitous about Page’s health, offered to 
spare the Ambassador this trip and to come himself to 
London for this leave-taking. However, Page insisted on 
carrying out the usual programme; but the visit greatly 
tired him and he found it impossible personally to take 
part in any further official farewells. The last ceremony 
was a visit from the Lord Mayor and Council of Plymouth, 
who came to the Ambassador’s house in September to pre- 
sent the freedom of the city. Ever since Page’s speech of 
August 4, 1917, Plymouth had been planning to do him this 
honour; when the Council heard that the Ambassador’s 
health would make it impossible for him to visit. Plymouth, 
they asked if they might not come to London. The pro- 
ceeding was most impressive and touching and the Ambas- 
sador’s five-minute speech, the last one which he made in 
England, had all his old earnestness and mental power, 
though the physical weakness of the man saddened every- 
body present. The Lord Mayor presented the freedom 
of the ancient borough in a temporary holder, explaining 
that a more permanent receptacle would follow the Am- 
bassador to America. When this arrived, it proved to be 
a beautiful silver model of the Mayflower. Certainly 
there could have been no more appropriate farewell gift 
to Page from the English town whose name so closely 
links the old country with the United States. 

The last scene took place at Waterloo Station. Sir 
Arthur Walsh came representing the King, while Mr. 
Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, and other ministers repre- 
sented the cabinet. The Government had provided a 
special railway carriage, and this was stationed at a con- 
venient place as Page’s motor drew up. So weak was 


LAST DAYS IN ENGLAND 403 


the Ambassador that it was with difficulty that his com- 
panions, the ever devoted Mr. Laughlin, on one side, and 
Page’s secretary, Mr. Shoecraft, on the other, succeeded 
in supporting him to his chair. Mr. Balfour, Lord Rob- 
ert Cecil and the others then entered the carriage, and, 
with all that sympathetic dignity in which Englishmen 
of this type excel, said a few gracious and affectionate 
words of good-bye. They all stood, with uncovered heads, 
as the train slowly pulled out of the station, and caught 
their final glimpse of Page as he smiled at them and 
faintly waved his hand. 


Perhaps the man most affected by this leave-taking was 
Mr. Balfour. He knew, as did the others, that that frail 
and emaciated figure had been one of the greatest friends 
that Britain had had at the most dreadful crisis in her 
history. He has many times told of this parting scene 
at Waterloo Station and always with emotion. 

‘T loved that man,’”’ he once said to an American friend, 
recalling this event. “I almost wept when he left Eng- 
land.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 


THE END 


AGE came home only to die. In fact, at one 
time it seemed improbable that he would live to 
reach the United States. The voyage of the Olympic, on 
which he sailed, was literally a race with death. The 
- great-hearted Captain, Sir Bertram Hayes, hearing of the 
Ambassador’s yearning to reach his North Carolina home, 
put the highest pressure upon his ship, which almost 
leaped through the waves. But for a considerable part of 
the trip Page was too ill to have much consciousness of his 
surroundings. At times he was delirious; once more he 
lived over the long period of “‘neutrality”’; again he was 
discussing intercepted cargoes and “notes” with Sir 
Edward Grey; from this his mind would revert to his 
English literary friends, and then again he was a boy in 
North Carolina. The Olympic reached New York more 
than a day ahead of schedule; Page was carried down the 
gangplank on a stretcher, propped up with pillows; and 
since he was too weak then to be taken to his Southern 
home, he was placed temporarily in St. Luke’s Hospital. 
Page arrived on a beautiful sunshiny October day; Fifth 
Avenue had changed its name in honour of the new Liberty 
Loan and had become the “Avenue of the Allies’’; each 
block, from Forty-second Street north, was decorated with 
the colours of one of the nations engaged in the battle 
against Germany; the street was full of Red Cross workers 
and other picturesquely clad enthusiasts selling Liberty 
Bonds; in its animated beauty and in its inspiring signi- 
404 


THE END 405 


ficance it formed an appropriate setting for Page’s home- 
coming. 

The American air seemed to act like a tonic on Page; 
in a short time he showed such improvement that his re- 
covery seemed not impossible. So far as his spirits and 
his mind were concerned, he became his old familiar self. 
He was able to see several of his old friends, he read 
the newspapers and discussed the international situation 
with his customary liveliness. With the assistance of 
his daughter, Mrs. :Loring, he even kept track of his 
correspondence. Evidently the serious nature of his 
illness was not understood, for invitations to speak 
poured in from all quarters. Most of these letters Mrs. 
Loring answered, but there was one that Page insisted 
on attending to himself. The City of Cleveland was 
organizing some kind cf a meeting dedicated to closer rela- 
tions with Great Britain, and the Mayor wrote Page ask- 
ing him to speak. The last thing which Page wrote with 
his own hand was his reply to this invitation; and it is an 
impressive fact that his finalwritten word should have dealt 
with the subject that had been so close to his heart for the 
preceding five years. 


To Harry L. Davis, Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio 


I deeply regret my health will not permit me to attend 
any public function for some time to come; for I deeply 
appreciate your invitation on behalf of the City of Cleve- 
land for the meeting on December 7th, and have a pro- 
found sympathy with its purpose to bring the two great 
English-speaking worlds as close together as possible, 
so that each shall thoroughly understand the courage 
and sacrifice and ideals of the other. This is the great- 
est political task of the future. For such a complete and 
lasting understanding is the only basis for the continued 


406 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WALTER H. PAGE 


progress of civilization. I am proud to be associated in 
your thought, Mr. Mayor, with so fitting and happy an oc- 
casion, and only physical inability could cause absence. 
Sincerely, 
WALTER H. Pace. 


Page’s improvement was only temporary; a day or two 
after this letter was written he began to sink rapidly; it 
was therefore decided to grant his strongest wish and take 
him to North Carolina. He arrived in Pinehurst on 
December 12th, so weak that his son Frank had to carry 
him in his arms from the train. 

“Well, Frank,” said Page, with a slightly triumphant 
smile, “I did get here after all, didn’t I?” 

He lingered for a few days and died, at eight o’clock in 
the evening, on December 21st, in his sixty-fourth year. 
He suffered no pain. He was buried in the Page family 
plot in the Bethesda Cemetery near Aberdeen. 

He was as much of a war casualty as was his nephew 
Allison Page, who lost his life with his face to the German 
machine guns in Belleau Wood. 


THE END 


APPENDIX 


SCRAPS FROM UNFINISHED DIARIES 


AGE was not methodical in keeping diaries. His 
documents, however, reveal that he took many 
praiseworthy resolutions in this direction. They include 
a large number of bulky books, each labelled ‘“ Diary” 
and inscribed with the year whose events were to be re- 
corded. ‘The outlook is a promising one; but when the 
books are opened they reveal only fragmentary good in- 
tentions. Entries are kept up for a few days, and then 
the work comes to an end. These volumes contain many 
scraps of interesting writing, however, which are worth 
preserving; some of them are herewith presented in hap- 
hazard fashion, with no attempt at order in subject matter. 


1913 


PETHERICK 


ETHERICK: may he be immortal; for he is a man 

who has made of a humble task a high calling; and 
without knowing it he has caused a man of a high calling 
to degrade it to a mean level. Now Petherick is a humble 
Englishman, whose father many years ago enjoyed the 
distinction of carrying the mail pouch to and from the 
post office for the American Embassy in London. As 
father, so son. Petherick succeeded Petherick. In this 
remote period (the Petherick must now be 60) Govern- 
ments had “despatch agents,’’ men who distributed mail 

407 


408 APPENDIX 


and whatnot, sent it on from capital to capital—were 
a sort of general “forwarding” factotums. The office 
is really out of date now. Telegraph companies, express 
companies, railway companies, the excellent mail service 
and the like out-despatch any conceivable agent—except 
Petherick. Petherick has qualities that defy change, 
such as an unfailing courtesy, a genuine joy in serving 
his fellows, the very genius of helpfulness. Well, since a 
governmental office once established acquires qualities 
of perpetuity, three United States despatch agents have 
survived the development of modern communication, one 
in London, one in New York, and the third (I think) in 
San Francisco. At any rate, the London agent re- 
mains. 

Now in the beginning the London despatch agent was a 
mail messenger (as I understand) for the Embassy. He 
still takes the pouch to the post office, and brings it back. 
In ordinary times, that’s all he does for the Embassy, for 
which his salary of about * * * is paid by the State De- 
partment—too high a salary for the labour done, but none 
too high for the trustworthy qualities required. If this 
had been all that Petherick did, he would probably have 
long ago gone to the scrap heap. It is one mark of a man 
of genius that he always makes his job. So Petherick. 
The American Navy came into being and parts of it come 
to this side of the world. Naval officers need help when 
they come ashore. Petherick was always on hand with 
despatches and mail for them, and Petherick was a handy 
man. Did the Captain want a cab? Petherick had one 
waiting. Did the Captain want rooms? Such-and-such 
a hotel was the proper one for him. Rooms were engaged. 
Did the Captain’s wife need a maid? Petherick had 
thought of that, too. Then a Secretary from some con- 
tinental legation wished to know a good London tailor. 


APPENDIX 4.09 


He sought Petherick. An American Ambassador from 
the continent came to London. London yielded Petherick 
for his guidance and his wants. Petherick became omni- 
present, universally useful—an American institution in 
fact. A naval officer who had been in Asiatic waters was 
steaming westward to the Mediterranean. His wife and 
three babies came to London, where she was to meet her 
husband, who was to spend several weeks here. A tele- 
gram to Petherick: they needed to do nothing else. When 
the lady arrived a furnjshed flat, a maid and a nurse and 
a cook and toys awaited her. When her husband arrived, 
a pair of boots awaited him from the same last that his 
last pair had been made on, in London, five years be- 
fore. At some thoughtful moment $1,000 was added 
to Petherick’s salary by the Navy Department; and a 
few years ago a handsome present was made to Peth- 
erick by the United States Naval Officers all over the 
world. 

But Petherick, with all his virtues, is merely an English- 
man, and it is not usual for an Englishman to hold a 
$3,000 office under appointment from the United States 
Government. The office of despatch agent, therefore, 
has been nominally held by an American citizen in 
London. This American citizen for a good many years 
has been Mr. Crane, a barrister, who simply turns over 
the salary to Petherick; and all the world, except the 
Secretary of State, knows that Petherick is Petherick and 
there is none other but him. 

Now comes the story: Mr. Bryan, looking around the 
world for offices for his henchmen, finds that one Crane 
has been despatch agent in London for many years, and 
he writes me a personal and confidential letter, asking 
if this be not a good office for some Democrat! | 

I tell the story to the Naval Attaché! He becomes 


410 APPENDIX 


riotous. He'll have to employ half a dozen clerks to do 
for the Navy ill what Petherick does well with ease, if he’s 
removed. Life would not be worth living anyhow. I 
uncover Petherick to the Secretary and show him in his 
glory. It must be said to the Secretary’s credit that he 
has said nothing more about it. Petherick, let us hope, 
will live forever. The Secretary’s petty-spoils mind now 
works on grand plans for Peace, holy Peace, having un- 
successfully attacked poor Petherick. And Petherick 
knows nothing about it and never dreams of an enemy in 
all the world, and in all naval and diplomatic life he has 
only fast friends. If Mr. Bryan had removed him, he 
might have made a temporary friend of one Democrat 
from Oklahoma, and lasting enemies of all that Demo- 
crat’s rivals and of the whole naval and diplomatic service. 


November, 1914. 


We have to get away from it—or try to—a minute at a 
time; and the comic gods sometimes help us. Squier! has 
a junior officer here to hold his desk down when he’s gone. 
He’s a West Point Lieutenant with a German name. 
His study is ordnance. A new kind of bomb gives him 
the same sort of joy that a new species would have given 
Darwin. He was over in France—where the armies had 
passed to and from Paris—and one day he found an un- 
exploded German bomb of anew sort. The thing weighed 
half a ton or thereabouts, and it was loaded. Somehow 
he got it to London—I never did hear how. He wrapped 
it in blankets and put it under his bed. He went out of 
town to study some other infernal contraption and the 
police found this thing under his bed. The War Office 
took it and began to look for him—to shoot him, the 





1Colonel (now Major General) George O. Squier, Military Attache at the 
American Embassy. 


APPENDIX All 


bomb-harbouring German! They soon discovered, of 
course, that he was one of our men and an officer in the 
United States Army. Then I heard of it for the first 
time. Here came a profuse letter of apology from the 
Government; they had not known the owner was one of 
my attachés. Pardon, pardon—a thousand apologies. 
But while this letter was being delivered to me one of the 
under-secretaries of the Government was asking one of 
our secretaries, “In Heaven’s name, what’s the Ambassa- 
dor going to do about it? We have no right to molest 
the property of one of your attachés, but this man’s room 
is less than 100 yards from Westminster Abbey: it might 
blow up half of London. We can’t give the thing back 
to him!” They had taken it to the Duck Pond, wherever 
that is. About that time the Lieutenant came back. 
His pet bomb gone—what was I going to do about it? 

— The fellow actually wanted to bring it to his office in 
the Embassy! 

“Look here, Lieutenant, besides the possibility of blow- 
up this building and killing every mother’s son of us, con- 
sider the scandal of the American Embassy in London 
blown up by a German bomb. That would go down in 
the school histories of the United States. Don’t you see)”’ 
No, he didn’t see instantly—he does so love a bomb! I 
had to threaten to disown him and let him be shot before 
he was content to go and tell them to unload it—he would 
have it, unloaded, if not loaded. 

Well, I had to write half a dozen letters before the thing 
was done for. He thinks me a chicken-livered old coward 
and I know much more about him than I knew before; 
and we are at peace. The newspapers never got the 
story, but his friends about town still laugh at him for 
trying first to blow up Westminister Abbey and then his 
own Ambassador. He was at my house at dinner the 


412 APPENDIX 


other night and one of the ladies asked him: “ Lieutenant, 
have you any darling little pet lyddite cartridges in your 
pocket?” Think of a young fellow who just loves bombs! 
Has loaded bombs for pets! How I misspent my youth! 


February, 1915. 


This is among the day’s stories: The British took a ship 
that had a cargo of 100,000 busts of Von Hindenburg— 
filled with copper. ) 

Another: When Frederick Watts was painting Lord 
Minto he found it hard to make the portrait please him. 
When he was told that Lord Minto liked it and Lady 
Minto didn’t and that So-and-So praised it, he exclaimed: 
‘“T don’t care a d—n what anyone thinks about it— 
except a fellow named Sargent.”’ 

And the King said (about the wedding!): “I have the 
regulation of the dress to be worn at all functions in the 
Chapel Royal. I, therefore, declare that the American 
Ambassador may have any dress worn that he pleases!”’ 

IX. M. House went to Paris this morning, having no 
peace message from this Kingdom whatever. This kind 
of talk here now was spoken of by the Prime Minister the 
other day “as the twittering of a sparrow in a tumult 
that shakes the world.”’ 

Lady P. remarked to me to-day, as many persons do, 
that [ am very fortunate to be Ambassador here at this 
particular time. Perhaps; but it isn’t easy to point out 
precisely wherein the good fortune consists. This much 
is certain: it is surely a hazardous occupation now. Henry 
James remarked, too, that nobody could afford to miss 
the experience of being here—nobody who could be here. 
Perhaps true, again; but I confess to enough shock and 
horror to keep me from being so very sure of that. Yet 
~ The wedding of Mr. Page’s daughter at the Chapel Royal. 


APPENDIX 413 


no other phenomenon is more noticeable than the wish 
of every sort of an American to be here. I sometimes 
wonder whether the really well-balanced American does. 
Most of them are of the overwrought and excitable kinds. 

A conservative lady, quite conscientious, was taken 
down to dinner by Winston Churchill. Said she, to be 
quite frank and fair: “Mr. Churchill, I must tell you that 
I don’t like your politics. Yet we must get on together. 
You may say, if you like, that this is merely a matter of 
personal taste with me, as J might not like your—well, 
your moustache.” “I see no reason, Madam, why you 
should come in contact with either.”’ 

My talk with Bonar Law: He was disposed to believe 
that if England had declared at once that she would go 
to war with Germany if France was attacked, there would 
have been no war. Well, would English opinion, before 
Belgium was attacked, have supported a government 
which made such a declaration? 

Mr. Bonar Law thinks that President Wilson ought to 
have protested about Belgium. 

He didn’t agree with me that much good human ma- 
terial goes to waste in this Kingdom for lack of opportun- 
ity. (That’s the Conservative in him.) 


Friday, April 30, 1915. 


Sir Edward Grey came to tea to talk with Mr. House 
and me—little talk of the main subject (peace), which is 
not yet ripe by a great deal. Sir Edward said the Ger- 
mans had poisoned wells in South Africa. They have 
lately used deadly gasesin France. The key to their mind 
says Sir Edward, is this—they attribute to other folk 
what they are thinking of doing themselves. 

While Sir Edward was here John Sargent came in and 
brought Katharine the charcoal portrait of her that he 


414, APPENDIX. 








had made—his present to her for her ai 1 Chu 
to W. A. W. P.t and me. A very graceful and 
thing for him to do. we 


April oOe 191s. aaah, i Pie 


Te Raa 


Concerning Peace: The German civil authorities want 
peace and so does one faction of the military party 
But how can they save their face? They have made 
their people believe that they are at once the perse- 
cuted and the victorious. If they stop, how can 
they explain their stopping? The people might rend 
them. The ingenious loophole discovered by House is— 
mere moonshine, viz., the freedom of the seas in war. ' 
That is a one-sided proposition unless they couple with | 
it the freedom of the land in war also, which is nonsense. 
Nothing can be done, then, until some unfavourable mili- 
tary event brings a new mind to the Germans. Peace 
talk, therefore, is yet mere moonshine. House has been 
to Berlin, from London, thence to Paris, then back to 
London again—from Nowhere (as far as peace is con- 
cerned) to Nowhere again. 


May 3, 1915. 


Why doesn’t the President make himself more accessi- 
ble? Dismiss X and get a bigger man? ‘Take his cabinet 
members really into his confidence? Everybody who 
comes here makes these complaints of him! 

We dined to-night at Y’s. Professor M. was there, etc. 
He says we've got to have polygamy in Europe after the 
war to keep the race up. 


Friday, May 21, 1915. 


Last night the Italian Parliament voted to give the 
Government war-powers; and this means immediate war 
IMrs. Page. 














APPENDIX A15 


- of the Allies. There are now eight nations 
yainst Germany, Austria, and Turkey; viz., 


a 


Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, Belgium, 
a Montenegro. And it looks much as if the United 
States will be forced in by Germany. 

r The British Government is wrestling with a very grave 
internal disruption—to make a Coalition Government. 
The only portfolios that seem absolutely secure are the 
Prime Minister’s and the Foreign Secretary’s (Sir Edward 
Grey’s)—for which latter, many thanks. The two-fold 
trouble is—(1) a difference between Churchill (First Lord 
of the Admiralty) and Lord Fisher—about the Dardanelles 
campaign and (I dare say) other things, and (2) Lord 
Kitchener’s failure to secure ammunition—*to organize 
the industries of the Kingdom.” Some even declare K. 
of K. (they now say Kitchener of Kaos) is a general colos- 
sal failure. But the prevailing opinion is that his raising 
of the new army has been good work but that he has failed 
with the task of procuring munitions. As for Churchill, 
he’s too restless and erratic and dictatorial and fussy and 
he runs about too much. I talked with him at dinner last 
night at his mother’s. He slips far down in his chair and 
swears and be-dams and by-Gods his assertions. But his 
energy does interest one. An impromptu meeting in the 
Stock Exchange to-day voted confidence in K. of K. and 
burned up a copy of the Daily Mail, which this morning 
had a severe editorial about him. 

Washington, having sent a severe note to Germany, is 
now upbraided for not sending another to England, to 
match and pair it. That’s largely German influence, but 
also the Chicago packers and the cotton men. These 
latter have easy grievances, like the Irish. The delays of 
the British Government are exasperating, but they are 
really not so bad now as they have been. Still, the Presi- 


416 APPENDIX. 


dent can be influenced by the criticism that he must 
hit one side every time he hits the other, else he’s not 
neutral! I am working by every device to help the sit- 
uation and to prevent another note. I proposed to-day 
to Sir Edward Grey that his Government make an im- 
mediate advance payment on the cotton that it proposes 
to buy. 

Unless Joffre be a man of genius—of which there are 
some indications—and unless French also possibly have 
some claim to this distinction and perhaps the Grand 
Duke Nikolas, there doesn’t yet seem to be a great man 
brought forth by the war. In civil life, Sir Edward Grey 
tomes to a high measure. As we yet see it from this 
English corner of the world, no other statesman now ranks 
with him. 


March 20, 1916. 


I am sure I have the best secret service that could be 
got by any neutral. I am often amazed at its efficiency. 
It is good because it is not a secret—certainly not a spy 
service at all. It is all aboveboard and it is all done by 
men of high honour and good character—I mean the 
Embassy staff. Counting the attachés there are about 
twenty good men, every one of whom moves in a some- 
what different circle from any other one. Every one cul- 
tivates his group of English folk, in and out of official life, 
and his group in the diplomatic corps. ‘There isn’t a week 
but every man of them sees his particular sources of in- 
formation—at their offices, at the Embassy, at luncheon, 
at dinner, at the clubs—everywhere. We all take every 
possible occasion to serve our friends and they serve us. 
The result is, [ verily believe, that we hear more than any 
other group in London. ‘These young fellows are all keen 
as razors. They know when to be silent, too; and they 


APPENDIX A17 


are trusted as they deserve to be. Of course I see them, 
singly or in pairs, every day in the regular conduct of the 
work of the Embassy; and once a week we all meet together 
and go over everything that properly comes before so 
large a “cabinet”? meeting. Thus some of us are on 
confidential terms with somebody in every department 
of the Government, with somebody in every other Em- 
bassy and Legation, with all the newspapers and corre- 
spondents—even with the censors. And the wives of those 
that are married are abler than their husbands. They are 
most attractive young Women—welcome everywhere— 
and indefatigable. Mrs. Page has them spend one after- 
noon a week with her, rolling bandages; and that regular 
meeting always yields something else. They come to my 
house Thursday afternoons, too, when people always 
drop in to tea—visitors from other countries, resident 
Americans, English—everybody—sometimes one hun- 
dred. 

Nobody in this company is a “Spy’’—God forbid! I 
know no more honourable or attractive group of ladies and 
gentlemen. Yet can conceive of no organization of spies 
who could find out as many things. And the loyalty of 
them all! Somebody now and then prefaces a revelation 
with the declaration, ‘‘This is in strict confidence—abso- 
lutely nobody is to hear it.” The answer is—* Yes, only, 
you know, I have no secrets from the Ambassador: no 
member of his staff can ever have.’ —Of course, we get 
some fun along with our tragedies. If I can find time, for 
instance, I am going to write out for House’s amusement 
a verbatim report of every conversation that he held in 
London. It has all come to me—from what he said to the 
King down; and it all tallies with what House himself 
told me. He went over it all himself to me the other day 
at luncheon.—I not only believe—I am sure-—that in this 


418 APPENDIX 


way I do get a correct judgment of public feeling and 
public opinion, from Cabinet Ministers to stock-brokers. 


December 11, 1916. 


The new Government is quite as friendly to us in its 
intentions as the old, and much more energetic. The old 
Government was a spent force. Mr. Balfour is an agree- 
able man to deal with, with a will to keep our sympathy, 
unless the dire need of ships forces him to unpleasantness. 
The Prime Minister is—American in his ways. Lord 
Robert has the old Cecil in him, and he’s going to maintain 
the blockade at any cost that he can justify to himself 
and to public opinion, and the public opinion is with him. 
They are all eager to have American approval—much 
more eager, I think, than a large section of public opinion, 
which has almost ceased to care what Americans think 
or do. The more we talk about peace, the more they 
think about war. There is no vindictiveness in the 
English. They do not care to do hurt to the German 
people: they regard them as misguided and misled. But 
no power on earth can stop the British till the German 
military caste is broken—that leadership which attacked 
Belgium and France and would destroy England. Bal- 
four, Lloyd George, the people, the army and the navy 
are at one in this matter, every labouring man, everybody, 
except a little handful of Quakers and professors and Noel 
Buxton. I think I know and see all the peacemen. They 
feel that they can talk to me with safety. They send me 
their pamphlets and documents. I think that all of them 
have now become warlike but three, and one of them is a 
woman. If you meet a woman you know on the street 
and express a sympathy on the loss of her second son, she 
will say to you, “ Yes, he died in defence of his country. 
My third son will go next week. They all die to save 


APPENDIX A19 


99 


us.” Doubtless she sheds tears in private. But her eyes 
are dry in public. She has discarded her luxuries to put 
money in the war loan. Say “Peace” toher? She would 
insult you. | 


May 10, 1917. 


We dined at Lambeth Palace. There was Lord Morley, 
whom I had not seen since his long illiness—much reduced 
in flesh, and quite feeble and old-looking. But his mind 
and speech were most alert. He spoke of Cobden favour- 
ing the Confederate States because the constitution of the 
Confederacy provided for free trade. But one day Bright 
informed Cobden that he was making the mistake of his 
life. Thereafter Cobden came over to the Union side. 
This, Morley heard direct from Bright. . 

The Archbishop spoke in high praise of Charnwood’s 
_Lincoln—was surprised at its excellence, etc. 

Geoffrey Robinson! asked who wrote the Quarterly 
articles in favour of the Confederacy all through the war 
—was it Lord Salisbury? Nobody knew. 

The widow of the former Archbishop Benson was there 
—the mother of all the Bensons, Hugh, A. C., etc., ete.— 
a remarkable old lady, who talked much in admiration of 
Balfour. 

The Bishop of—Winchester())—was curious to know 
whether the people in the United States really understood 
the Irish question—the two-nation, two-religion aspect 
of the case. I had to say no! 

There is an orphan asylum founded by some preceding 
Archbishop, by the sea. The danger of bombardment 
raised the question of safety. The Archbishop ordered 
all the children (40) to be sent to Lambeth Palace. We 
dined in a small dining room: “The children,’’ Mrs. David- 

\Editor of the London Times. | 





4.20 APPENDIX 


son explained, “have the big dining room.”’ Each child 
has a lady as patroness or protector who “adopts” her, 
i.e., sees that she is looked after, etc. Some of the ladies 
who now do this were themselves orphans! 

At prayers as usual at 10 o’clock in the chapel where 
prayers have been held every night—for how many cen- 
turies? 

At lunch to-day at Mr. Asquith’s—Lord Lansdowne 
there; took much interest in the Knapp farm work while 
I briefly explained. 

Lord Morley said to Mrs. Page he had become almost a 
Tolstoyan—Human progress hasn’t done much for man- 
kind’s happiness, etc. Look at the war—by a “ progres- 
sive” nation. Now the mistake here is born of a class- 
society, a society that rests on privilege. ** Progress,”’ 
has done everything (1) in liberating men’s minds and 
spirits in the United States. This is the real gain; (2) 
in arraying all the world against Germany. 


Tuesday, January 22, 1918. 


Some days bring a bunch of interesting things or men. 
Then there sometimes come relatively dull days—not 
often, however. To-day came: 

General Tasker H. Bliss, Chief-of-Staff, now 64—the 
wisest (so I judge) of our military men, a rather wonderful 
old chap. He’s on his way to Paris as a member of the 
Supreme War Council at Versailles. The big question 
he has struck is: Shall American troops be put into the 
British and French lines, in small groups, to fill up the 
gaps in those armies? The British have persuaded him 
that it is a military necessity. If it were less than a 
necessity, it would, of course, be wrong—i.e., it would cut 
across our national pride, force our men under another 
flag, etc. It is not proposed to deprive Pershing of his 


APPENDIX 421 


command nor even of his army. The plan is to bring over 
troops that would not otherwise now come and to lend 
these to the British and I'rench armies, and to let Pershing 
go on with his army as if this hadn’t been done. Bliss is 
inclined to grant this request on condition the British 
bring these men over, equip and feed them, etc. He 
came in to ask me to send a telegram for him to-morrow 
to the President, making this recommendation. But on 
reflection he decided to wait till he had seen and heard the 
French also, who desire the same thing as the British. 

General Bliss is staying with Major Warburton; and 
Warburton gave me some interesting glimpses of him. 
A telegram came for the General. Warburton thought 
that he was out of the house and he decided to take it 
himself to the General’s room. He opened the door. 
There sat the General by the fire talking to himself, 
wrapped in thought. Warburton walked to the middle 
of the room. The old man didn’t see him. He decided 
not to disturb him, for he was rehearsing what he proposed 
to say to the Secretary of State for War or to the Prime 
Minister—getting his ears as well as his mind used to 
it. Warburton put the telegram on the table near the 
General, went out, and wasn’t discovered. 

Several nights, he sat by the fire with Warburton and 
began to talk, again rehearsing to himself some important 
conclusions that he had reached. Every once in a while 
he’d look up at Warburton and say: * Now, what do you 
think of that)” 

That’s an amazing good way to get your thought clear 
and your plans well laid out. I’ve done it myself. 

I went home and Kipling and Carrie! were at lunch with 
us. Kipling said: “Tl tell you, your coming into the war 
made a new earth for me.” He is on a committee to see 

‘Mrs. Kipling. 


422 APPENDIX 


that British graves are properly marked and he talked 
much about it. I could not help thinking that in the back 
of his mind there was all the time thought of his own dead 
boy, John. . 

Then in the afternoon Major Drain brought the copy of 
a contract between the United States Government and 
the British to build together 1500 tanks ($7,500,000). 
We took it to the Foreign Office and Mr. Balfour and I 
signed it. Drain thinks that the tanks are capable of 
much development and he wishes our army after the war 
to keep on studying and experimenting with and improv- 
ing such machines of destruction. Nobody knows what 
may come of it. 

Then I dined at W. W. Astor’s (Jr.) There were Bal- 
four, Lord Salisbury, General and Lady Robertson, Mrs. 
Lyttleton and Philip Kerr. 

During the afternoon Captain Amundsen, Arctic ex- 
plorer came in, on his way from Norway to France as the 
guest of our Government, whereafter he will go to the 
United States and talk to Scandinavian people there. 

That’s a pretty good kind of a full day. 


April, 19, 1918. 


Bell,! and Mrs. Bell during the air raid took their little 
girl (Evangeline, aged three) to the cellar. They told 
her they went to the cellar to hear the big fire crackers. 
After a bomb fell that shook all Chelsea, Evangeline 
clapped her hands in glee. “Oh, mummy, what a big 
fire cracker!” 





1Mr. Edward Bell, Second Secretary of the American Embassy. 


INDEX 





INDEX 


Age, Louisville, connection with, I 32 

Aid to stranded Americans in Europe on out- 
break of war, I 304, 307, 329 

Alabama claims, the framed check for, in 
British Foreign Office, I 390, II 78 

Alderman, Dr. Edwin A., early efforts in behalf 
of public education, I 73, 78; stricken with 
tuberculosis, but recovers health, I 120; on 
committee to lecture in England, II 346. 

Letters to: expressing fear and hope of 

Wilson, I 121; on meeting of the Southern 
and the General Education Boards, I 125; 
after Wilson’s inauguration, I 128; while en- 
route to port as Ambassador, I 129; on 
changed world conditions, II 142 

Ambassador, some activities of an, I 159; asa 
preventer of calamities, I 166 

America and Great Britain, only free countries 
in the world, II 121 

American Government, slight regard for by 
British, I 145, 152, 190, II 153; strong feeling 
against uncourteous Notes of, II 74; on han- 
dling of Lusitania case, II 79; on being under 
German influence, II 80, 97 

American Luncheon Club, could not adhere to 
neutrality, II 230 

American Navy, its aid in combatting the sub- 
marine, II 294 

American supremacy, a before-the-war prophe- 
cy, I 144; why the British will acknowledge, 
1170 

Ancona, torpedoed, II 79 note 

Anderson, Chandler P., counsel for Committee 
for relief of stranded Americans, I 307; backs 
up Ambassador in neutrality letter to Wilson, 
I 373; gives reasons why unwise to demand 
adoption of Declaration of London, I 387 

Anglo-American-German ‘“‘pact,’’ planned by 
Wilson and House, I 281 

Anglomania, charged against ambassadors, I 
257 

Anti-Imperialists, protest declaration of war 
against Spain, I 62 

Arabic, sinking of, thought surely to bring on 
war, II 26 

Arbitration Treaty, renewal of, I 285; signifi- 
cance of Germany’s refusal to sign, I 294 

Archbold, John D., attempts to explain Foraker 
letters, I 88 


42, 


Archibald, James, trapped by British secret 
service, II 101 

Asquith, H. H., opposition to the House of 
Lords, I 137; at state dinner to King Chris- 
tian, I 167; hint to, on Mexican situation, 
I 185; conciliatory remarks at Guildhall 
banquet, I 210; explains Dardanelles prep- 
arations, I 430; his ministry suspected of 
pacifist or “‘defeatist’’ tendencies, I 430; aged 
by the war, II 141; conversation with, regard- 
ing Casement case, and relations between 
Great Britain and America, II 168; refuses 
to discuss Wilson’s peace note, II 207; in 
House of Commons speech welcomes America 
as ally, II 230; inclined toward seeking 
peace, IT 353 

Astor, Mr. and Mrs. Waldorf, at the home of, 
Ii 380 

Allantic Monthly, editor of, I 53 

Atlantic Ocean, a blessing to America, I 162, 
LORS LOU, 

Austrian Embassy, left in charge of American 
Ambassador, I 305, 321; difficulties incident 
to, I 345 

Aycock, Gov. Charles B., efforts in educational 
reform, I 85; commendatory letter from, I 86 


Babcock, Commander, arrivalin England, II 274 

Bacon, Senator Augustus O., declared he would 
have blocked Page’s Ambassadorship had 
he known he was author of “The South- 
erner,”’ I 93, 226 

Baker, Secretary Newton D., sees the war at 
first-hand, II 364; dinner at Embassy to, 
II 364, 370; Page’s memorandum of his visi, 
II 366 

Baker, Ray Stannard, visit at Sandwich, II 384 

Balfour, aged by the war, II 141; drafts reply 
to Wilson’s peace note, II 212; reply to 
question how best America could help, II 219; 
on the disposition of the German colonies, 
II 246; friendliness toward United States 
averts crisis in Venezuela dispute, II 249; 
much concerned at feeling toward British in 
the United States, II 251; his home life, II 
257; conference with Bonar Law and, over 
financial help from America, II 261; satis- 
factory conference with Mr. Polk over black- 
list and blockade, II 265; explains ‘‘secret 


426 


treaties’’ to President Wilson, II 267; cons 
ference with McAdoo on financial situation 
II 267; sends dispatch to President Wilson 
substantiating previous reports of Page and 
Sims on submarine peril which were not 
taken seriously, II 284; indignant over mis- 
understanding with Brazilian Navy, II 304; 
at the Embassy dinner to Secretary Baker, 
II 365, 370; at train to bid good-bye, II 402; 
most affected at leave-taking, 403 

Balfour Mission to the United States, II 249 
et seq. 

Barclay, Esther, Mr. Page’s maternal grand- 
mother, I 6 

Bayard, Thomas F., accused of Anglomania 
while Ambassador, I 257 

Beckendorff, Count, talk with, II 82 

Belgium, violation of, the cause of Great Brit~ 
ain’s participation in the war, I 315; sending 
food supplies to aid starving, I 346 

Benham, misunderstanding over American de- 

' gtroyer’s action during submarine operations 
off Nantucket, II 253 

Benton, William S., Englishman, murdered in 
Mexico, I 285 

Beresford, Lord Charles, complains of attitude 
of Foreign Office in pacifying America, I 365; 
makes speech in House of Lords on attitude 
of U. S. Destroyer Benham, II 253 

Bernstorff, Count von, objectionable activities 
of, I 335; efforts to secure intercession of the 
United States toward peace, I 403; at the 
Speyer dinner, I 404; instructed to start 
propaganda for “freedom of the seas,’’ I 436; 
gives pledge that liners would not be sub- 
marined without warning, [I 30 note; thought 
in England to dominate our State Depart_ 
ment, II 80; cable proposing suspending of 
submarine war, II 149; threatens President 
Wilson with resumption of submarine sink- 
ings unless he moves for peace, II 200; news 
of his dismissal received in London, IT 215 

Bethmann-Hollweg, not seen by Colonel 
House, I 289; tells King of Bavaria peace 
must be secured, II 181 

Biddle, General, at the Embassy dinner to 
Secretary Baker, II 365, 370 

Bingham School, studies and environment at, 
I 16; selected for honour prize by Ambas- 
sador, I 17 

Blacklist, feeling in America over the, II 184; 
conditions change on American entry into 
war, II 264, 265, 266 

Blanquet, General, in Mexican uprising, I 175 

Bliss, General Tasker, wisdom and tact impress 
the Allies, IIT 351 

Blockade, British, compared to our blockade in 
Civil War, II 55 et seg; the American Note 
protesting against, II 69 


INDEX 


Blockade, strong feeling in America against, 
Il 184 

Bolling, Thomas, at President Wilson’s lunch- 
eon, II 171 

Bones, Miss, at President Wilson’s luncheon, 
II 171 

Boy-Ed, dismissal of, II 108 

Brazilian Navy, ships join American unit in 
European waters, II 304 

Breitung, E. N., makes test case with Dacia 
registry, I 393 

British Navy League, activity in keeping up the 
navy, I 284 

Bryan, William Jennings, uncomplimentary 
editorial on, in World’s Work, I 87; attitude 
toward concession holders in Mexico, I 181; 
refuses to consider intervention in Mexico, 
% 193; an increasing lack of confidence in, 
I 193; tirade against British, to Sir William 
Tyrrell, I 202, to Col. House, I 206; Asquith’s 
opinion of, 236; Page’s appeal to Colonel 
House that he be kept out of Europe, I 235, 
236; regards Ambassador as unneutral, I 362; 
insists that Great Britain adopt the Declara- 
tion of London, I 373, 377; interested in the 
Straus peace proposal, I 407; resignation after 
Lusitania notes, [1 6; proposes going to Eng- 
land and Germany to try peace negotiations, 
II 12 

Bryan, comments on his political activity but 
diplomatic laxity, 1194, 225, 236; crank 
once, crank always, II 27; democratic 
party wrecked by his long captaincy, If 
190 

Bryce, Lord, hopeless of the two countries ever 
understanding one another, II 39; concern at 
our trivial notes, II 67; conversation with, on 
misunderstandings between America and 
Great Britain, and the peace settlement, IT 
165; depressed at tenor of Wilson’s note pro- 
posing peace, sends him personal letter, II 
207; in House of Lords speech welcomes 
America as ally, II 230; frequent visitor at 
the Embassy, II 315; attitude toward a 
League of Nations, II 357 

Burns, John, resigns from British Cabinet on 
declaration of war, I 316 

Buttrick, Dr. Wallace, intimacy with, I 85; 

' efforts in building up Southern agriculture, 
I 94; in hookworm eradication, I 99; lectures 
on the United States throughout Great 
Britain, II 291; his speeches a source of in- 
spiration to British masses, II 345; asked to 
organize a committee of Americans to extend 
the work, II 345; informed by Colonel House 
of Wilson’s disapproval, II 348; warns Page 
of breakdown if he does not at once return to 
America, II 375; beneficial effects of hic 
lectures, III 388 





INDEX 


Canterbury, Archbishop of, in House of Lords 
speech welcomes America as ally, II 231; on 
gratitude shown to America, IT 245 

Carden, Sir Lionel Edward Gresley, his being 
sent to Mexico, a British mistake, I 187; 
anti-American propaganda in Cuba, I 196; 
as British Minister to Mexico shows great 
hostility to the United States, I 197; formally 
advises Huerta to abdicate, I 209; Page’s 
part in recall from Mexican post, I 215 et seq. 

Carlyle, Thomas, new letters from, discovered 
in Canada, I 60 

Carnegie, Andrew, visit to, at Skibo, I 142 

Carranza, Venustiano, thought by Wilson to be 
a patriot, I 227, 228 

Carson, Sir Edward, resists the Home Rule 
Bill, 1 137; at Bonar Law dinner, IT 119; tells 
Lloyd George submarines must be settled 
before Irish question, II 260 

Casement, Sir Roger, trial and conviction in- 
spire movement from Irish-Americans result- 
ing in Senate resolution, II 166 

Cecil, Lord Robert, incident of the “‘ Boston 
Tea Party,” I 392; receives German proposal 
from Page as “German Ambassador,” II 201; 
letters to Sir C. Spring Rice on Germany’s 
peace proposal, II 201, 202; Page’s interview 
with to explain Wilson’s peace communica- 
tion, II 208; at train to bid good-bye, II 402 

Chamberlain, Senator, presents petition de- 
manding Ambassador’s removal, I 259; de- 
mands Senate be furnished with copy of 
Panama tolls speech, I 260 

Chancery, removal of, to better quarters, I 341 

Children, crusade for education of, I 72 

China case, the, satisfactorily settled, If 154, 
155 

Choate, Joseph H., understanding of Hay- 
Pauncefote Treaty, I 242; accused of An- 
glomania while Ambassador, I 257 

Christian, King, royal reception to, I 167 

Christmas in England, 1915, II 103 

Churchill, Winston, proposal for naval holiday, 
I 277, 278, 279, 298 

Civil War, first contact with, I 1; his father’s 
attitude toward, I 5; early recollections of 
Sherman’s invasion, II 10; the aftermath, I 13 

Clark, Champ, opponent of repeal of Panama 
Tolls Bill, I 264 

Cleveland, President, an influence in formation 
of ideals, I 40; conversation with, I 40 

Cotton, the question of contraband, I 267 

Country Life Commission, appointed on, by 
President Roosevelt, I 89 

Court, presentations at, I 156, 172 

Courtesies in diplomatic intercourse, necessity 
for, I 147, 190 

Cowdray, Lord, head of British oil concessions 
in Mexico, I 181; withdraws request for 


427 


Colombian oil concession, I 217; long talk 
with on intervention in Mexico, I 225; great 
monetary loss in giving up oil concessions, I 
Depart 

Cradock, Admiral, does not approve American 
policy toward Mexico, I 230 

Crewe, Marquis of, on Page’s tact as Ambas- 
sador, II 397 

Criticisms and attacks on Ambassador Page; 
the “knee-breeches” story, I 133; Hearst 
papers watching for opportunity, I 149, 261; 
furor over “English-led and English-ruled’» 
phrase, I 258; speech before Associated 
Chambers of Commerce, on Panama tolls, I 
259 

Cuba, a problem, I 176 

Curzon, Lord, in House of Lords speech wel- 
comes America as ally, II 230 


Dacia incident, the, a serious crisis averted, I 
392, II 4 

Daniels, Josephus, protest made against his 
appointment to Secretaryship of Navy, l 
119 

Dardanelles: Asquith explains preparations, I 
430 

Daughters of the Confederacy, considered not 
helpful to Southern regeneration, I 44 

Davis, Harry L., Mayor of Cleveland, letter 
to, expressing regret at not being able to at- 
tend meeting for purpose of bringing England 
and America closer together, II 405 

Davis, Jefferson, call on, I 37 

Declaration of London, Bryan insists on adop- 
tion by Great Britain, I 373, 377; history of 
the articles, I 375; the solution of the diffi- 
culty, I 385 

Declaration of War, America’s, and its effect 
in Great Britain, II 230 et seq. 

Delcassé, Kaiser makes proposal to, to join in 
producing “complete isolation” of the 
United States, IT 192 

De Kalb, Courtney, congratulations from, I 59 

Dent, J. M., loses two sons in the war, II uibihe 
opinion of Asquith, II 116 

Depression in England, the dark days of the 
war, II 64, 81, 94 

Derby, Lord, “excessive impedimenta,’’ II 344; 
at the Embassy dinner to Secretary Baker, 
I 365, 370 

Dernburg, Bernhard, instructed to start prop- 
aganda for “freedom of the seas,” I 436 

Desart, Earl of, formulates Declaration of Lon- 
don, I 375 

Diaz, Porfirio, authority maintained by genius 
and force, I 175 

Dilettanti, Society of, dinners at, IT 312 

Doubleday, Frank N., joins in publishing ven- 
ture with S. S. McClure, I 64; the Harper 


428 


experiment, I 65; has ‘‘business”’ visit from 
a politician, I 88 
Letters to: impressions of England, I 138; 

anent the Christmas holidays, etc., I 164; 
Christmas letter, 1915, II 110; impressions 
of Europeans, II 132; on America’s pro- 
gramme after declaration of war, II 224; on 
wartime conditions and duties, II 240; on the 
good showing of the Americans in war prepa- 
ration, II 324; depressed at long continua- 
tion and horrors of the war, II 325 

Doubleday, Page & Co., founding of the firm, 
I 66; attains great influence and popularity, 
I 86 

Dumba, Dr. Constantin, given his passports, 
II 30 note 

Duncan, Dr., president of Randolph-Macon 
College, I 20 


Education: efforts in behalf of Southern child, 
I 72; church system declared a failure, I 78; 
organization of Southern Educational Con- 
ference, I 83; Southern Education Board 
organized, I 84; General Education Board 
founded by John D. Rockefeller, I 84; the 
South’s awakening, I 85 

England, why unprepared for war, II 35; 
changed and chastened, II 342 

Englishwoman’s letter from Berlin giving Ger- 
many’s intentions toward England, America, 
and the world, I 347 

“English-led and English-ruled,” furor over 
phrase, I 258 

‘‘Excoriators,’’ disregarded, I 80-83 


Falkenhayn, cynical toward proposals of Colo- 
nel House, I 289 

Farming, love of, and home in South, I 115, 127 
128 

Field, Eugene, succeeds to desk of, on St. Joseph 
Gazette, I 36 

Fisher, Lord, remark that Balfour was “too 
much of a gentleman’”’ for First Lord of the 
Admiralty, II 101 

Flexner, Dr. Abraham, cites Page as greatest 
educational statesman, I 85 

Flexner, Dr. Simon, interested in hookworm 
campaign, I 100 

Foraker, Senator Joseph B., career destroyed 
by exposure of Archbold-Standard Oil 
letters, I 88 

Forbes, Cameron, fails to see President Wilson 
on his return from Philippines, II 174 

Ford, Henry, the venture in the peace ship, II 
110 note 

Forgotten Man, The, address at Greensboro, 
I 74 

Forum, The, made of great influence and a 
business success, under editorship, I 49 


INDEX 


Fosdick, Harry Emerson, on proposed com- 
mittee to lecture in England, II 346 

Fowler, Harold, in London, I 134; sent to Bel- 
gium, I 338; enlists in British Army, I 358 

France, not in favour of England reducing naval 
programme, [ 284; a gift of a billion dollars 
to, proposed, II 218 

“Freedom of the seas,’’ Colonel House’s pro- 
posed reform, I 435 

French, Field Marshal Sir John, informs Page 
of undiplomatic methods of State Depart- 
ments in peace proposals, I 425, 427; aged by 
the war, II 141 

Frost, W. G., writes for Atlantic Monthly, I 60 

Fryatt, Captain, execution of, hardens British 
people to fight to finish, II 182 


Garfield, President, assassination deplored 
throughout the South, I 39 

Gates, Dr. Frederick T., interested in hook- 
worm campaign, I 99 

Gaunt, Captain, sends news from Washington 
of Bernstorff’s dismissal, II 215 

General Education Board, organized by John 
D. Rockefeller, I 84; assists Dr. Knapp in 
agricultural demonstration work, I 96 

George V, received by, I 135; very likeable, I 
157; overwrought condition in speaking with 
Page on declaration of war, I 309; much dis- 
tressed at tenor of Wilson’s note proposing 
peace, II 207; as a “human being,” II 235; 
night spent with, II 236, 240; luncheon to 
General Pershing, II 237; telegram of regret at 
resignation of Mr. Page and ill-health that 
occasioned it, II 397 

German Embassy, left in charge of American 
Ambassador, I 306; difficulties incident to, 
I 306, 345, 359 

Germany: ridicules idea of naval holiday, I 279; 
would have been victorious in World War 
had she signed arbitration treaty with United 
States, I 294; attempts to embroil the United 
States and Great Britain, I 393, 400; move 
for peace, 1916, II 179 

Germany, travels in, in 1877, I 30 

Gildersleeve, Professor, Basil L., at Johns 
Hopkins University I 24, 25; Page a favourite 
pupil of, in Greek, II 299 

Gilman, Daniel Coit, constructive work as pres- 
ident of Johns Hopkins University, I 23 

Godkin, E. L., writes for Atlantic Monthly, I 60 

Grady, Henry, kindness of, I 34, 37 

Great Britain and the United States only free 
countries in the world, II 121 

Great Britain’s participation in the war, the 
cause of, I 315 

Greek, proficiency in, I 21, 24, 25, 30; II 299 

Grey, Lord, ex-Governor-Genera} of Canada, 
1150 


INDEX 


Grey, Sir Edward, credentials presented to, I 
135; high regard for, I 150; his fairness facili- 
tates diplomatic business, I 155; talks with on 
Mexican situation, I 184, 185, 188, 199; in- 
formed as to Carden’s activities, I 219, 220; 
asked to meet Colonel House at luncheon, 
I 245; note to Sir C. Spring Rice on Wilson’s 
address to Congress on Tolls Bill, I 254; 
criticized for “‘bowing too low to the Ameri- 
cans,”’ I 261; depressed at extent of Anglo- 
phobia in the United States, I 266; evinces 
satisfaction at clearing up of problems, I 285; 
weeps as heinforms Page of ultimatum to Ger- 
many, I 309, 315; ‘“‘subservience’’ to American 
interests, 1364; accepts Declaration of London 
with modifications, I 384; joking over serious 
affairs, I 390; welcomes Page’s solution of the 
Dacia tangle, I 394; letter to Sir Cecil Spring 
Rice regarding Speyer-Straus peace proposal, 
I 408; states war could be ended more quickly 
if America ceased protests against seizure of 
contraband, I 421; talk on detained shipping 
and Wordsworth poems, II 103; ‘‘a God’s 
mercy for a man like him at his post,’’ II 118; 
aged by the war, II 141; satisfactory settle- 
ment of the China case, II 155; speech in 
House of Commons on Peace, II 157; noth- 
ing but praise heard of him, II 159; memoran- 
dum of conversation with, on conditions of 
peace, II 160; receives Senate Resolution 
asking clemency for Sir Roger Casement, 
II 167; forced to resign, because he refused 
to push the blockade and risk break with 
America, II 233; guest with Mr. and Mrs. 
Page at Wilsford Manor, II 288; walk to 
Stonehenge with, II 292; serious blockade 
questions give way to talks on poets, IT 305; 
promises government support of Belgian Re- 
lief plan, II 310; frequent visitor at the Em- 
bassy, II 315 

Letters from: congratulations on Wilson’s 
address to Congress advising declaration of 
war, II 234; expressing grief at Page’s de- 
parture and citing his great help, II 400 


Haldane, Viscount, at Thanksgiving Dinner of 
the American Society, I 213; discussion with 
Von Tirpitz as to relative sizes of navies, I 
278: knew that Germany intended war, II 35 

Hall, Admiral William Reginald, brings news 
of Bernstorff’s dismissal, II 215 

Hanning, Mrs. Robert, sister of Thomas Carlyle, 
I 60 

Harcourt, Right Honourable Lewis, eulogizes 
work of International Health Board, I 101 

Harden, Maximilian, says Germany must get 
rid of its predatory feudalism, II 193 

Harper & Brothers, difficulties of, I 64 

Harrow, visit to, and talk to schoolboys, 117 


429 


Harvey, George, succeeds Page as editor of 
Harper’s, I 66 

Hay, John, understanding of Hay-Pauncefote 
Treaty, I 242; accused of Anglomania while 
Ambassador, I 257 

Hays, Sir Bertram, captain of the Olympic, 
races ship to hasten Page’s homecoming, II 
404 

Hearst, William Randolph, used by Germans 
in their peace propaganda, I 410, 411 

Hearst papers, antagonism of, I 149, 256, 264, 
286 

Hesperian, submarined in violation of Bern- 
storff’s pledges, II 30 

Hewlett, Maurice, his son among the missing, 
II 115 

Home Rule Bill, Carson threatens resistance to, 
I 137; “‘division’’ in House of Lords, I 138 

Hookworm eradication, efforts in,I 98 

Hoover, Charles L., war relief work while Amer- 
ican Consul at Carlsbad, I 334 

Hoover, Herbert C., relief work at beginning of 
war, I 333; selected by Page for Belgian Re- 
lief post, II 310 

House, Colonel Edward M., wires Page to 
come North, expecting to offer Secretaryship 
of Interior, I 118; transmits offer of Am- 
bassadorship, I 130; on Cowdray and Carden, 
I 218, 220; meets Sir Edward Grey to talk 
over Panama Tolls question, I 246; mission 
to the Kaiser a disappointment, I 289; no 
success in France, I 297; fancied security in 
England, thinks his mission unnecessary, I 
298; telegrams, to and from Wilson on proffer- 
ing good offices to avert war, I 317, 318; de- 
clares bill admitting foreign ships to American 
registry “full of lurking dangers,” I 392; de- 
clares America will declare war on Germany 
after Lusitania sinking, II 2; sees “Too proud 
to fight’’ poster in London, II 6; recommends 
Page’s appointment as Secretary of State, 
II 11; fails to alter Wilson’s opposition to 
Taft Committee visiting England, I 348 

Letters from: reporting progress in Panama 

Tolls matter, I 253; plans to visit Kaiser and 
bring about naval holiday between nations, 
I 277; cites further plans for visiting Germany, 
I 281; respecting proposed trip to Germany, 
I 285, 286, en route, I 288; note from Berlin, 
I 296; from Paris, I 297; on the outbreak of 
the war, I 299; transmitting Wilson’s warning 
to adhere more strictly to neutrality, I 362; 
explains the toning down of demands that 
Declaration of London be adhered to, I 378; 
on German peace proposals, and giving his 
ideas for a settlement, I 413; proposing that 
Wilson start peace parleys, I 416; thinks 
Germany ready for peace proposals, I 424, 
425; decides to visit combatants in interests 


430 INDEX 


of peace, I 425, 429; talks in Berlin with 
Zimmermann and others regarding peace par- 
leys, I 432, 433, 434; on appointment of 
Lansing to succeed Bryan, II 11; on Bryan’s 
intentions of going to England and Germany 
to try peace negotiations, II 12; reporting 
success of Balfour Mission, II 263 

Letters to: comparing the Civil War with 
the World War, 1 5; on the Mexican situation, 
I 189; asked personally to deliver memoran- 
dum to President on intervention in Mexico, 
I 194; on visit of Sir William Tyrrell to the 
United States, I 201; letters to Page on Mexi- 
can situation, I 205, 206; on Mexican ques- 
tion, I 210, 211; on Lord Cowdray and oil 
concessions in Mexico, etc., I 216; protesting 
publication of secret information respecting 
Carden, I 223; suggesting intervention in 
Mexico, I 230; on serious disadvantage in not 
having suitable Embassy, I 233; on rashness 
of Bryan’s visit to Europe, I 235; appeal for 
attention to cables and letters by State De- 


partment, I 239; on necessity of repeal of . 


Panama Tolls Bill, I 247; on the prevention 
of wars, I 270; asked to further plan to have 
Wilson visit England, as a preventative of 
European war, I 275; favouring alliance of 
English-speaking peoples, I 282; on French 
protest against reduction of British naval 
programme, I 283; transmitting pamphlets on 
“federation’’ and disarmament, I 284; told he 
will have no effect on Kaiser, I 287; reply to 
note as to prevention of the war, I 300; de- 
scribing conditions in second month of the 
war, I 327; on the horrors of war, and the set- 
tlement, I 340; on difficulties of Sir Edward 
Grey with Army and Navy officers in releasing 
American cargoes, I 365; on evil of insisting on 
Declaration of London adoption, I 380; re- 
garding the Straus peace proposal, I 410 ; ex- 
plaining there can be no premature peace, I 
417; on harmlessness of Bryan on proposed 
peace visit and cranks in general, II 13; com- 
menting on slowness of Wilson in Lusitania 
matter, II 26; on sinking of Arabic, II 27; not 
interested in “pleasing the Allies,’ II 28: on 
Dumba’s intrigues, and Wilson’s “‘ watchful 
waiting and nothing doing,” IT 30, 31, 37, 38; 
on the lawyer-like attitude of the State De- 
partment, II 54; the best peace programme— 
the British and American fleets, II 69; on 
uncourteous notes from State Department, 
II 72; on British adherence to the blockade, 
and an English Christmas, 1915, II 103; on 
the conditions of peace and the German 
militarism, II 134, 157; on prophecy as to 
ending the war by dismissal of Bernstorff, 
II 197; on the beneficial visit of the Labour 
Group and others, II 387 


Houston, David F., suggested to Wilson for 
Secretary of Agriculture, I] 114; has proper 
perspective of European situation, II 176 

Letters to: impressions of diplomatic life, 
II 151; suggesting vigorous action of Admin- 
istration in prosecuting the war, II 226; on 
American cranks being sent to England, 
others prevented, II 359 

Houston, Herbert 8., letters to, giving impres- 
sions of England, I 139 

Huerta, General Victoriano, seizes presidency 
of Mexico, I 175; attitude of Great Britain 
and the United States toward recognition; 
I 180; an epochal figure, I 183; rejects pro- 
posals submitted by Lind, I 193; proclaims 
himself dictator, I 197 

Huxley, Thomas H., delivers address at open- 
ing of Johns Hopkins University, I 25 


International Health Commission, endowed by 
John D. Rockefeller, I 100; codperation by 
British Government, I 101 

Irish Question, the, British difficulties with, I 
159; cause of feeling against British in the 
United States, II 251; Wilson requests Great 
Britain to settle, If 255; Lloyd George striv- 
ing for solution, II 259 


James, Henry, frequent visitor at the Embassy, 
II 315 

Jeanes Board, appointment to, I 89 

Jellicoe, Admiral Sir John, vigilance in war 
time, 1335; after battle of Jutland, II 141; 
reply to question how best America could 
help, II 219; drafts dispatch explaining seri- 
ousness of submarine situation which Balfour 
sends to President Wilson, II 285 


Johns Hopkins University, teaching on new lines, 
I 23 

Johnston, Miss Mary, noted serial of, in 
Allantic Monthly, I 56, 61 

Judson, Harry Pratt, on proposed Committee 
to lecture in England, II 346 

Jusserand, opinion of the Straus peace proposal, 
I 407 


Keller, Helen, persuaded to write “Story of 
My Life,”’ I 90 

Kent, Mr., forms American Citizens Relief 
Committee in London at outbreak of war, 
I 304, 307 : 

Kerr, Philip, conversation with on future rela- 
tions of the United States and Great Britain, 
II 84 

Kipling, Rudyard, loses his son in the war, II 
115 

Kitchener, Lord, speech in House of Lords a 
disappointment, II 96; criticism of, II 120; 





INDEX 


Memorandum after attending service in 
memory of, II 140 

Knapp, Dr. Seaman A., his “Demonstration 
Work” in Southern agriculture, I 95; his 
funeral, I 96 

Kropotkin, Prince Peter, writes Memoirs for 


Allantic Monthly, 1 61 


Lane, Secretary Franklin, comment on feeling 
against British for conduct in Huerta affair, 
1 198 

Lansdowne, Marquis of, letter favouring pre- 
mature peace severely criticized, IT 327, 353 

Lansing, Robert, regards Ambassador as un- 
neutral, I 362; a lawyer, not a statesman, I 
369; insistence that Great Britain adopt 
Declaration of London, I 378 et seg; attitude 
of lawyer, not statesman, II 53; arguments 
against British blockade, II 62; mind running 
on “cases”, not diplomacy, II 176; answers 
Page’s letter of resignation, transmitting 
President Wilson’s request to reconsider and 
stay at his post, II 199 

Lassiter, General, encouraged on trip to the 
front, II 245 

Laughlin, Irwin, First Secretary of the Em- 
bassy, I 133; requested to ascertain Great 
Britain’s attitude toward recognition of 
Huerta, I 180; tells Colonel House he will 
have no success with Kaiser, I 285; on Ger- 
many’s intentions toward America, i351 
note; as to depressing effect of the war on 
Page, I 357; backs up Ambassador in 
neutrality letter to Wilson, I 373; gives opin- 
ion that persistence is unwise in demanding 
acceptance of Declaration of London, I 387; 
Wilson’s comment to, on Page’s letters, II 
22: diplomatically presents to Sir Edward 
Grey the Senate Resolution asking clemency 
for Casement, II 167; letters from, on occasion 
of Germany’s 1916 peace movement, IT 180; 
commended to President Wilson in letter 
of resignation, II 394 

Law, Bonar, gives depressing news from the 
Balkans, II 104; dinner with, II 119; reply to 
question how best America could help, IT 219; 
conference with Balfour and, over financial 
help from America, IT 261 

Lawrence, Bishop, on proposed committee to 
lecture in England, II 346 

Leadership of the world, American, IT 105, 110, 
145, 254 

League to Enforce Peace, Page’s opinion of, IT 
144; Sir Edward Grey in sympathy with 
objects of, II 163; Lord Bryce, remarks as 
to favourable time for setting up such a league, 
II 165 

Leaks in diplomatic correspondence, gravity of, 
I 147, 148, 151, 222, 223, 224, 235, II 7, 276 


431 


Lichnowsky, German Ambassador at London, 
almost demented at breaking out of the war, 
I 306, 309, 315; places blame for war on Ger- 
many, I 322 

Lincoln, Abraham, monument to, erected at 
Westminster, I 274 

Lind, John, failure of mission to Mexico, I 193 

Literary style and good writing, advice on, II 
341 

Lloyd George, his taxing of the aristocracy, I 
137; landowners fear of, I 158; at state 
dinner to King Christian, I 167; on the neces- 
sity of reducing navy programme, I 283; 
holding up under strain of war, II 83; aged 
by the war, II 141; in House of Commons 
speech welcomes America as ally, II 230; has 
the touch of genius in making things move, 
II 259; working for solution of Irish question, 
II 259; too optimistic regarding submarine 
situation, II 287; his energy keeps him in 
power, II 354; at the Embassy dinner to 
Secretary Baker, II 365, 370; congratulates 
Mr. and Mrs. Page cn American success at 
Cantigny, [I 375; letter expressing sorrow at 
Mr. and Mrs. Page’s departure and reviewing 
their good work, II 398 

Loring, Charles G., marries Miss Katharine 
Page, IT 87; in service on western front, II 375 

Loring, Mrs. Charles G., letters to, on travelling 
—and staying at home, [I 88; autumn, gar- 
dens, family, and war news, II 92; Christmas 
letter, 1915, II 117; from St. Ives, II 332, 339 

Lowell, James Russell, accused of Anglomania 
while Ambassador, I 257 

Lusitania, torpedoed, I 436; bulletins of the 
«tragedy received at the dinner given in hon- 
our of Colonel and Mrs. House, II 1; distress 
and disillusionment of the Wilson notes, II 6 


Madero, Francisco, overthrown as president of 
Mexico, and assassinated, I 175 

Mayflower Pilgrims, dedication of monument 
to, at Southampton, I 258 

Mayo, Admiral, sent to Europe to study naval 
situation, II 322 

McAdoo, Secretary, conference with Balfour 
Mission on financial situation, II 267 

McClure, S. S., joins forces with F. N. Double- 
day, I 64; the Harper experiment, I 65; anec- 
dote of, II 303 

McCrary, Lieut.-Commander, on Committee 
for relief of stranded Americans, 307 

McIver, Dr. Charles D., educational states- 
man, I 73, 74, 78; as the character, Profes- 
sor Billy Bain, in “The Southerner,” I 93 

McKinley Administration endorsed on meas- 
ures against Spain, by Atlantic Monthly, I 63 

Mary, Queen, received by, I 136 

Mensdorf, Austrian Ambassador, marooned in 


132 


London, at outbreak of war. I 305, 309; the 
war a tragedy to, I 321 

Mersey, Lord, comments on the tariff, I 150; 
at dinner of Dilettanti Society, II 312 

Mexico, ‘policy and principle” in, 1175 et seq.; 
difficulties of self-government, II 177; prog- 
ress due to foreign enterprise, I 178; the 
problem of oil concessions, I 179, 181; inter- 
vention believed by Page the only solution, 
I 188, 193, 194, 200, 230, 273 

Mims, Professor Edwin, letter to, on attacks 
of Southern theologians, I 80 

Monroe Doctrine, the Kaiser’s proposal to 
smash it, II 192 

Moore, John Bassett, suggestion that he be put 
in charge of American-British affairs, I 
239 

Morley, John, at state dinner to King Christian, 
I 167; resigns from British cabinet on declara- 
tion of war, I 316; visitor at the Embassy, 
II 315 

Morley, Lord, on reforms, I 141 

Morgan, J. P., account of Allies with, greatly 
overdrawn at time of America’s entrance into 
war, II 272; this paid by proceeds of Liberty 
Loans, II 273 

Morgan, J. P. & Co., in control of Harper & 
Brothers, I 64 

*Mummy”’ theme applied to the unawakened 
South, I 45, 75 

Munitions, American, importance of to the 
Allies, I 368 

Miinsterberg, Prof. Hugo, pro-German activi- 
ties of, I 335 


Navy Department, ignores urgent recommenda- 
tions of Admirat Sims that destroyers be sent, 
II 276, 284 

Negro, the, the invisible “freedom’’, I 12; 
wrong leadership after the Civil War, I 14; 
fails to take advantage of university educa- 
tion during Reconstruction, I 18 

Negro education, and industrial training ad- 
vocated, I 43 

Neutrality, strictly observed, I 358, 360; the 
mask of, II 230 

New York Evening Post, connection with, I 48 

New York World, correspondent for, at Atlanta 
Exposition, I 34; on editorial staff, I 35 

Northcliffe, Lord, illness from worry, II 66; 
“saving the nation from its government”, II 
116; attitude on Wilson’s peace note, II 207 

Norway, shipping destroyed by submarines, II 
281 

Nicolson, Harold, the silent toast with, II 301 


Ogden, Robert C., organizes Southern Educa- 
tional Conference, I 83; after twenty years 
of zealous service, I 126 


INDEX 


O’Gorman, Senator, active in Panama Tolls 
controversy, I 243, 283 

“OQ. Henry,”’ on Page’s “‘complimentary”’ re- 
jection of manuscripts, II 303 

Osler, Sir William, Page’s physician, insists on 
the return home, ITI 393 


Pacifism, work of the “peace spies,’’ II 210 

Pact of London, binding the Allies not to make 
a separate peace, I 409 note 

Page, Allison Francis, a builder of the common- 
wealth, I 4; attitude toward slavery and the 
Civil War, I 5; ruined by the war, I 13 

Page, Allison M., falls at Belleau Wood, II 392, 
406 

Page, Anderson, settles in Wake County, N. C., 
14 

Page, Arthur W., Delcassé in conversation with 
tells of Kaiser’s proposal to join in producing 
‘‘complete isolation”? of the United States, 
IT 192; called to London in hopes of influenc- 
ing his father to resign and return home be- 
fore too late, II 393 

Letters to; on the motor trip to Scotland, 

I 142; on conditions in second month of the 
war, I 335; a national depression and the 
horrors of war, I 344; emotions after Lusi- 
tania sinking, II 5; on the tendency toward 
fads and coddling, II 10; on the future rela- 
tions of the United States and Great Britain, 
II 84; on the vicissitudes of the ‘‘German 
Ambassador to Great Britain,” II 90; Christ- 
mas letter, 1915, II 121; on the attitude in 
the United States toward Germany, II 129; 
on the effect of the war on future of America, 
and the world, II 217; never lost faith in 
American people, II 223: on America’s en- 
trance into the war, II 238; on grave condi- 
tions, submarine and financial, II 287; on the 
occasion of the Plymouth speech, and the re- 
ceptions, IT 317; on the Administration’s lack 
of confidence in British Navy, Wilson’s reply 
to Pope, etc., II 322; Christmas letter, 1917, 
depicting a war-weary world, II 328; on paci- 
fists—from the President down, II 337; views 
on Palestine, II 350; on personal diet, and the 
benefit of Secretary Baker’s visit, II 369; 
‘on the anti-English feeling at Washington, 
II 385; while resting at Sandwich, II 388 

Page, Mrs. Catherine, mother and close com- 
panion, I 7; Christmas letter to, I 8 

Page, Frank C. in London, I 134; with his 
father in Rowsley when news of Arabic sink- 
ing was received, II 26; in service with Amer- 
ican troops, II 375; realizes his father is failing 
fast and insists on his returning home, II 393 

Letters to: on building up the home farm, 

and the stress of war, I 353; Christmas letter, 
1915, II 121 


INDEX i330 


Page Henry A., letters to, stating a govern- 
ment might be neutral, but no man could 
be, I 361; on illusions as to neutrality and 
the peace proposals, II 152 

Page, Miss Katharine A., arrival in London, 
I 134; married in the chapel Royal, II 87; 
see also, Loring, Mrs. Charles G. 

Page, Lewis, leaves Virginia to settle in North 
Carolina, I 3 

Page, Logan Waller, has proper perspective of 
European situation, II 176 

Page, Mary E., letter to, II 376 

Page, Ralph W., letters to; impressions of 
Lendon life, I 161; on wartime conditions, 
I 352; Christmas letter, 1915, II 121; on 
longings for fresh Southern vegetables and 
fruits and farm life, II 335; on style and good 
writing, II 340; on the big battle, etc., II 371, 
372; in praise of book on American Diplo- 
macy, II 381; on success of our Army and 
Navy, II 390 

Page, Mrs. Ralph W., Christmas letter to, 163 

Page, Robert N., letters to, impressions of 
social London, I 153 

Page, Thomas Nelson, Colonel House confers 
with in regard to peace parleys, I 434 

Page, Walter Hines, impressions of his early 
life, I; family an old one in Virginia and 
North Carolina, 3; maternal ancestry, 6; 
close sympathy between mother and son, 
8, 11; birthplace, and date of birth, 9; recol- 
lections of the Civil War, 10; finds a market 
for peaches among Northern soldiers, 14; 
boyhood and early studies, 16; intense am- 
bition, 20; Greek Fellowship at Johns Hopkins 
University, 24; renewed for the next year, 
27; early prejudices against Yankees, 28; 
travels in Germany, 1877, 30; lectures on 
Shakespeare, 30; teacher of English at Louis- 
ville, Ky., 32; enters journalism, 32; experi- 
ence with Louisville Age, 32; reporter on, 
then editor of, Gazette, at St. Joseph, Mo., 
33; a free lance, 34; correspondent for N. Y. 
World at Atlanta Exposition, 34; on the staff 
of N.Y. World, 35; married, 37; first acquaint- 
ance with Woodrow Wilson, 37; American- 
ism fully developed, 40; regard for President 
Cleveland, 40; founds State Chronicle at 
Raleigh, 42; a breaker of images—of the 
South, 44; the “‘mummy letters,’’ 45; instru- 
mental in establishment of State College, 
Raleigh, 47; with N. Y. Evening Post, 48; 
makes the Forum of great influence and a 
business success, 49; a new type of editor, 50; 
editor of Atlantic Monthly, 53; discovers 
unpublished letters of Thomas Carlyle, 60; 
attitude toward Spanish American War, 62; 
the Harper experiment, 65; joins in founding 
Doubleday, Page & Co., 66; his policy for 


the World’s Work, 66; public activities, 72; 
in behalf of education, 72; his address, “‘ The 
Forgotten Man,”’ 74; his Creed of Democracy, 
78; work with General Education Board, $5; 
independence as an editor, 87; severely 
criticizes John D. Archbold for Foraker bri- 
bery, 88; appointed by Roosevelt on Country 
Life Commission, 89; other public services, 89; 
author of ‘“‘the Southerner” 90; activities in 
behalf of Southern agriculture and Hookworm 
eradication, 94; his interest in Wilson’s candi- 
dacy and election, 102, et seq.; discourages ef- 
forts to have him named for’Cabinet position, 
113; why he was not named, 118; protests 
against appointment of Daniels, 119; love for 
farming, 127, 128; offered Ambassadorship, 
130; impressions of London and the Embassy, 
132, 144; impressions of Scotland, 142; han- 
dling of the Mexican situation, 183; belief in 
intervention in Mexico, 193, 194; compli- 
mented by President Wilson, Bryan, and Sir 
William Tyrrell, 208; his part in the removal 
of Sir Lionel Carden from Mexican post, 215. 
commended by Wilson, 219, 221; suggested 
for Secretary of Agriculture, 232, 286; why 
he wished to remain in London, 240; work in 
behalf of Panama Tolls Bill repeal, 244; as- 
sailed for certain speeches, 258, 259; opposed 
to including Germany in international alli- 
ance, favouring understanding between 
English-speaking peoples, 282; difficulties at 
outbreak of the war, 301 et seq.; asked to take 
over Austrian Embassy, 305, German Em- 
bassy, 306; varied duties of war time, 337; 
difficulties in charge of German and Austrian 
and Turkish embassies, 345; relief work in 
starving Belgium, 346; ageing under the strain’ 
and the depressing environment, 357; difficul- 
ties of maintaining neutrality, 358; warned 
from Washington, 362; tactful handling of 
the demands that Declaration of London be 
adopted, 370, 373; writes Colonel House that 
he will resign if demands are insisted on, 383; 
memorandum of the affair, 385; his solution 
of the Dacia puzzle, 394; attitude toward a 
premature peace, 417; learns through General 
French of the undiplomatic methods of State 
Department in peace proposals, 425, 427 


VOL. II 


Humiliations from Washington’s failure to 
meet the situation, 5; remarks on Bryan’s res- 
ignation, 10; considered for appointment as 
Secretary of State, 11; his feeling toward poli- 
cies of Wilson, 18; boldness of his criticism, 
21; Wilson and Lansing express anxiety that 
he may resign, 24; describes Zeppelin attack on 
London, 34, 38; Christmas in England, 1915, 
103; perplexed at attitude of the United 


434, INDEX 


States, 128; his impressions of Europeans, 
132; summoned to Washington, 148; memo- 
randum of his visit to Washington, 171; Im- 
pressions of President Wilson, 172; waits five 
weeks before obtaining interview, 183; disap- 
pointing interview at Shadow Lawn, 184; 
letter of resignation sent to Wilson, 189; 
and the reply, 199; delivers Germany’s 
peace proposal to Lord Robert Cecil, 201; 
comments to Secretary of State on ‘“‘insult- 
ing words’? of President Wilson’s peace 
proposal, 207; implores Wilson to leave 
out the ‘‘peace without victory’ phrase 
from his speech, 213; learns of Berns- 
dorff’s dismissal, 215; memorandum of his 
final judgment of Wilson’s foreign policy to 
April 1, 1917, 222; memorandum written on 
April 3, the day after Wilson advised Con- 
gress to declare war, 228; on friendly footing 
with King George, 234; joins with Admiral 
Sims in trying to waken the Navy Depart- 
ment to seriousness of the submarine situa- 
tion, 278; Page—the man, 295-320; moves for 
relief of Belgium, 310, and delegates Hoover, 
311; Speech at Plymouth, 316; goes to St. 
Ives for brief rest, 332; heatedly referred to as 
“really an Englishman”’ by President Wilson, 
348; memorandum on Secretary Baker’s visit, 
366; failing health, 374; resignation in obedi- 
ence to physicians orders, 393; representa- 
tives from King, and Cabinet at train to 
bid good-bye, 402; rallies somewhat on 
arrival in America, 405; the end—at home, 
406 

Page, Walter H. Jr., Christmas letter from his 
“eranddaddy,” II 124 

Page, Mrs. Walter H., arrival in London, I 134; 
plays part in diplomacy, I 215, 224, 226; her 
great help to the Ambassador, II 315; the 
last letter, If 395 

Palestine and Zionism, views on, If 351 

Panama Tolls, a wrong policy, I 190; Sir Wil- 
liam Tyrrell’s talk with President Wilson, I 
207, 209 

Panama Tolls Bill, Wilson writes of hopes for 
repeal, I 222; repeal of, I 232 ef seq., the bill a 
violation of solemn treaties, I 242; the con- 
test before Congress, I 255 

Paris, capture of city thought inevitable, I 401 

Parliament, holds commemorative sessions in 
honour of America’s participation in the war, 
II 230 

Pasha, Tewfik, leaves Turkish Embassy in 
charge of American Ambassador, I 345 

Peace, Germany’s overtures, I 389; her first 
peace drives, I 398; Wilson’s note to warring 
powers, received with surprise and irritation, 
II 205 

**Peace without Victory’’ speech, of President 


Wilson, and its reception in Great Britain, 
II 212 

Peace Centennial, plans being formed for, I 236, 
274 

Pershing, General, at luncheon with King 
George, II 237; his presence of moral benefit 
to French Army, II 290 

Philippines, a problem, I 176 

Pinero, Sir Arthur, reminiscences of Page at 
Dilettante gatherings, II 313 

Plymouth, Mayor and Council, present the 
freedom of the city, II 402 

Plymouth Speech, inspires confidence in Amer- 
ican co6peration, II 316 

Polk, Frank L., invited by British Foreign Office 
to consultation in England, II 248; “could 
not be spared from his desk,’”’ IT 256 

Letter from: on wonderful success of Bal- 
four Mission, II 263 
Letters to: on Balfour and his Mission to the 

United States, IIT 252; on Secretary Baker’s 
visit, II 361 


Price, Thomas R., noted professor at Randolph- 


Macon, I 22 

Probyn, Sir Dighton, calls at Embassy, I 339 

Raboteau, John Samuel, Mr. Page’s maternal 
grandfather, I 6 

Randolph-Macon College, studies at, I 20 

Rawnsley, Rev. Hardwicke Drummond, a sub- 
ject of conversation, I 149 

Rayleigh, Lady, political ability, II 257, 258 

Rayleigh, Lord Chancellor of Cambridge Uni- 
versity, II 145 

Reconstruction, more agonizing than war, I 14; 
effects of, upon State University, I 18 

Reed, John, account of Mexican conditions in- 
fluences Wilson’s policy, I 228 

Religion, deepest reverence for, I 80 

Riis, Jacob, writes for Atlantic Monthly, I 60 

Rockefeller, John D., organizes General Educa- 
tion Board, I 84; publication of Reminis- 
cences, I 88; founds Hookworm Commission | 
and International Health Commission, I 100 

Roosevelt, Theodore, writes for Aélantic 
Monthly, I 60; appoints Country Life Com- 
mission, I 89 
_ Letter to: introducing the Archbishop of 
York, II 307 

Letter from: praising the Ambassador’s 

services, II 401 

Root, Elihu, understanding of Hay-Pauncefote 
Treaty, I 242 

Rose, Dr. Wickliffe, dinner to, in London, as 
head of International Health Board, I 101; 
hookworm work, I 127 

Round Table, The, organization for study of 
political subjects, II 84; Round Table, The, 
organ of above, a quarterly publication, II 
84, 105 


INDEX 


Royal Institution of Great Britain, address be- 
fore, I 191 

Royce, Josiah, associate at Johns Hopkins, I 25 

Russian Collapse, effect on the Allies, II 
35a 

Rustem Bey, Turkish Ambassador, given pass- 
ports, II 49 note 

St. Ives, Cornwall, seeking rest at, IT 332 

St. Joseph Gazette, connection with, I 33, 37, 
succeeds to Eugene Field’s desk, on I 36 

Sackville-West, Sir Lionel, handed his passports 
by Cleveland, II 33 nofe 

Sargent, John, frequent visitor at the Embassy,’ 
II 315 

Saw-mill units, favourable reception of, II 291 

Sayre, Mr. and Mrs., hearty reception in Lon- 
don, 1213! 222,275 

Schrippenfest. celebration of, in Berlin, I 291 

Schwab, Charles M., supplying war material to 
Allies, I 341 

Scotland, impressions of, I 142 

Scudder, Horace E., succeeded as editor of 
Atlantic Monthly, 1 53 

Secret treaties, explained to President Wilson 
by Mr. Balfour, II 267 

Sedgwick, Ellery, recollections of Mr. Page, as 
editor of Atlantic Monthly, I 55; on the high 
regard in which Page was held, II 298 

Shakespeare, lectures on, I 30 

Sharp, Ambassador, his mention of peace re- 
sented by the French, I 389; at President 
Wilson’s luncheon, II 171 

Sherman’s army, cavalry troop camp at Page 
home, ransack, and destroy contents, I 10 

Shoecraft, Mr., receives news of Bernstorff’s 
dismissal, II 215 

Sibler, Prof. E. G., reminiscences of Page at 
Johns Hopkins, I 27 

Simon, Sir John, frequent visitor at the Em- 
bassy, II 315 

Sims, Admiral, with Ambassador Page, dines 
with Lord Beresford, II 254; advised of ter- 
rible submarine situation, IT 273, 275; arrival 
and welcome in England, II 274; recommen- 
dations ignored by Washington, II 276; 
backed up by Page in strong dispatch, II 
278; praised in letter to Wilson, II 281; in 
command of both English and American 
naval forces at Queenstown, II 282; letters 
from, on submarine situation, II 282; in high 
regard with British Admiralty, II 290; at the 
Embassy dinner to Secretary Baker, II 365, 
370 

Shaler, Millard, reports on destitution in Bel- 
gium, IT 310 

Skinner, Consul-General, on Committee for re- 
lief of stranded Americans, I 307 

Slocum, Colonel, urged to hasten arrival of 
American troops, II 363 


435 


Smith, C. Alphonso, an exchange professor to 
Germany, IT 145 

Smith, Senator Hoke, “‘friendly deportation” 
of, suggested, II 17; campaign against British 
Blockade, II 56, 61, 63; urging embargo on 
shipments to Allies, II 211 

South, the, efforts in behalf of, I 38, 43, 74; three 
“‘ghosts’”’ which prevent progress, I 91 

Southampton speech, press comments on, 141 

Southern Education Board, active work with, 
I 84 

Southern Educational Conference, organization 
of, I 83 

**Southerner, The,”’ only effort at novel writing, 
I 90 

Spanish-American War, attitude toward, I 62 

Speyer, James, connected with German peace 
move, I 403 

Spring Rice, Sir Cecil, notifies Washington of 
British change of attitude toward recognition 
of Huerta, I 181; confidentially consulted 
by Col. House regarding demands that Dec- 
laration of London be adopted, I 379; noti- 
fies Washington that Dacia would be seized, 
1 393, opinion of Straus peace proposal, I 407; 
letters from Lord Robert Cecil on Germany’s 
peace proposal, II 201, 202 

Squier, Colonel, American military attaché in 
London at outbreak of the war, I 301 

Standard Oil Co., editorial against, in Archbold- 
Foraker scandal, I 88 

State Chronicle, connection with, I 42; editori- 
ally a success, I 48 

State College, Raleigh, N. C., instrumental in 
establishment of, I 47, 48 

State Department, leaks of diplomatic cor- 
respondence through, I 147, 148, 151, 223, 224 

State Dept., ignores official correspondence, 
I 94, 213, 219, 224, 225, 232, 238, 239, II 7, 
55, 217, 253; not properly organized and con- 
ducted, II 8; trivial demands and protests, 
II 54, 68; uncourteous form of Notes, I 72 

Stiles, Dr. Charles W., discovers hookworm, 
I 98; work in combatting, I 127 

Stone, Senator William J., spokesman of pro- 
German cause, I 380 

Stovall, Pleasant A., Colonel House confers 
with, regarding peace parleys, I 434 

Straus, Oscar 5., used as a tool in German peace 
propaganda, I 389, 403 et seq. 

Submarine sinkings, Germany threatens to re- 
sume, unless Wilson moves for peace, 
II 200; German military chieftains at Pless 
conference decide to resume unrestricted 
warfare, II 212; the most serious problem at 
time of American entry into war, II 273, 
275, et seq. 

Sulgrave Manor, ancestral home of the.Wash- 
ingtons, restoration and preservation, I 274; 


436 


plan to have President Wilson at dedication 
of, I 274, 275, II 248 

Sussex “‘pledge”’, a peace move of Germany, 
II 150 


Taft, William H., fails in having Carden re- 
moved from Cuba, I 196, 215, 219; accepts 
British invitation to head delegation explain- 
ing America’s purposes in the war, II 346; 
Wilson’s strong disapproval interferes with 
the project, II 347 

Tariff Commission, travelling with, for N. Y. 
World, I 35 

Teaching democracy to the British Govern- 
ment, I 187, 211 

Tennessee, sent to England on outbreak of war 
with gold for relief of stranded Americans, 
I 307 

Thayer, William Roscoe, disappointed in policy 
of the World’s Work, I 66; letter to, in ex- 
planation, I 67 

Tillett, Wilbur Fisk, friend at Randolph-Macon 
College, I 20 

Towers, Lieutenant, shown remnant of torpedo 
from Hesperian, II 40 

Trinity College, studies at, I 19 

Turkish Embassy left in charge of American 
Ambassador, I 346 

Tyrrell, Sir William, significance of his visit to 
the United States, I 201; unsatisfactory con- 
sultation with Bryan, I 202; explains to 
President Wilson the British policy toward 
Mexico, I 204, 207; conversation with Colonel 
House, I 206; Colonel House informs him of 
plan to visit Kaiser in behalf of naval holiday 
plan, I 277; advises House not to stop in 
England on way to Germany, I 289; expresses 
relief on withdrawal of demands that Declara- 
tion of London be adopted, I 387; comment 
on Dumba’s dismissal, and Bernstorff, II 101 


Underwood Tariff Bill, impressions of in Great 
Britain, 150, 172 


Van Hise, on proposed committee to lecture in 
England, II 346 

Vanderlip, Frank A., at the Speyer ‘‘peace 
dinner’’, I 404 

Villa, Pancho, thought by Wilson to be a pa- 
trigtwlsczimees 

Vincent, George, on proposed committee to lec- 
ture in England, II 346 

Von Jagow, offers no encouragement to Colonel 
House's proposals, I 289 

Von Papen, dismissal of, II 108 

Von Tirpitz, discussion with Viscount Haldane 
as to relative sizes of navies, I 278; hostile 
to Colonel House’s proposals, I 289 


INDEX 


Waechter, Sir Max, efforts for ‘‘federation”’ 
and disarmament, I 284 

“Waging neutrality”’, policy of, I 362 

Wallace, Henry, letters to: on Wilson’s candi- 
dacy, I 105; on backing up new Secretary of 
Agriculture, etc., I 115 

Wallace, Hugh C., accompanies Colonel House 
to Europe, I 288; joins ‘‘assemblage of im- 
mortals”? at Embassy, II 315 

Walsh, Sir Arthur, Master of the Ceremonies, 
I 135; at train to bid good-bye, II 402 

Walsh, Senator Thomas anti-English attitude, 
II 61 

War, American efforts to prevent the, I 270 et 
seq. 

War, memorandum at outbreak of the, I 301 

Washington, Booker T., writes for Altantic 
Monthly, I 60; induced to write ‘‘Up From 
Slavery’’, I 90 

Wantauga Club, activities of the, I 47; crusade 
for education of Southern child, 73 

Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, gives Colonel House 
information of conditions in Germany, I 281 

White, Henry, understanding of 
Pauncefote Treaty, I 242 

White, William Allen, writes for Atlantic 
Monthly, I 60 

Whitlock, Brand, eulogized, I 334 

Willard, Joseph E., Colonel House confers with, 
in regard to peace parleys, I 434 

Williams, Senator John Sharp, demonstrates 
blockade against Germany not an injury to 
cotton-producing states, II 63 

Wilhelm ITI, nullifies Hague Conferences, I 280; 
Colonel House disappointed in mission to, 
I 289; derides American arbitration treaty, 
I 294; Colonel House’s impressions of, I 295; 
asks President Wilson to transmit peace offer 
to Great Britain, I 426; makes proposal to 
Deicassé to join in producing “complete 
isolation”’ of the United States, II 192 

Wilson, Miss Willia Alice, married to Page, 
i Siri 

Wilson, Dr. William, father of Mrs. Page, I 37 

Wilson, Sir Henry, succeeds Sir William Robert- 
son as Chief of Imperial General Staff, IE 354 
note 

Wilson, Woodrow, first acquaintance with, I 37; 
writes for Atlantic Monthly, I 60; Page greatly 
interested in his candidacy and election, I 102, 
et seq.; Colonel House introduced to, I 107; 
memorandum of interview with, soon after 
election, I 110; offers Ambassadorship, I 130; 
attitude toward recognition of Huerta, I 180; 
formulates new principle for dealing with 
Latin American republics, I 182; refuses to 
consider intervention in Mexico, I 193; sug- 
gestion that he officially visit Sulgrave 
Manor, the ancestral home of the Washing- 


Hay- 


INDEX 


tons, I 195; explains attitude on Panama Toll 
question to Sir William Tyrrell, I 207; ex- 
presses gratification in way Page has handled 
Mexican situation, I 208; letter giving credit 
for Carden’s recall from Mexico, and for 
constructive work, I 221; addresses Congress 
asking repeal of Panama Tolls Bill, I 253; 
plan to visit England on occasion of restora- 
tion of Sulgrave Manor, I 274, 275, 11248; re- 
quested by resolution of the Senate to proffer 
his good offices for mediation between Austria 
and Serbia, I 317; telegrams to and from 
Colonel House on proffering good offices to 
avert war, I 317, 318; message to King George 
proffering good offices to avert war, I 320; 
neutrality letter to the Senate, I 360; desires 
to start peace parleys, I 416; insists on press- 
ing the issue, I 423; the “Too proud to 
fight’? speech derided and denounced in 
England, II 6; the Lusitania notes, II 6; 
Page’s feeling toward policies of, II 8; appre- 
ciation of Page letters, I] 22; peace activities 
after Sussex “pledge’’, II 148; his reply to 
the German note concerning the submarine 
cessation, II 150, 156; reluctant to speak on 
foreign matters with his ambassadors, II 171, 
172; lived too much alone, no social touch, 
II 173; addresses Congress on threatened 
railroad strike, II 172; refuses to send high 
ranking officers as military attachés, II 177; 
interview with Ambassador Page at Shadow 
Lawn, II 185; sends peace communication 
to all the warring Powers, II 204; reception 
in Great Britain of the ‘‘Peace without 
Victory” speech, II 212; answer to the Pope’s 
peace proposal, IT 321, 323; coldness toward 
the Allies, II 345; his strong disapproval of 
closer relations with Great Britain, prevents 
visit of Taft and noted committee, II 346 

Letters from: on ‘‘mistaken’’ opinion of 
British critics of Carranza and Villa, I 227, 
228; expressing gratitude and regard of and 
hopes for repeal of Toll Bill, I 254; regarding 
the criticized speeches, I 262, 265; reply to 
proposal to visit England, I 276; acceptance 
of Page’s resignation, II 396 

Letters to: congratulations and suggestions 
on Election Day, I 108; as to best man for 
Secretary of Agriculture, I 114; impressions 
of the British people, I 144; on royal recep- 
tion to King Christian of Denmark, I 167; on 
the Mexican situation, I 184, 185, 188; mem- 
orandum sent through Colonel House on in- 
tervention in Mexico, I 194; on feeling in 
England toward Panama Tolls question, ! 


437 


248; recapitulating events bringing the twe 
countries more in unity, I 251; explanation 
of speech before Associated Chambers of 
Commerce, I 260, 263; suggests speech at- 
tacking Anglophobia, I 264; on the outbreak 
of war, I 303; on German atrocities, I 325; 
on agreement of nations not to make peace 
separately, etc., I 338; attempts to enlighten 
on the real nature of the war, I 370; ‘“‘ Rough 
notes toward an explanation of the British 
feeling toward the United States,’’ I 373; on 
liability of Paris being captured and German 
peace drive being launched, I 401; on feeling 
of English toward American inaction after 
Lusitania notes, II 40, 41, 43, 44, 45; told 
that if he broke diplomatic relations with 
Germany he would end the war, II 51; on 
the military situation, fall of 1915, and the 
loss of American prestige, II 94; while waiting 
for interview sends notes of conversations 
with Lord Grey and Lord Bryce, II 183; letter 
of resignation—with some great truths, IJ 
190; regarding success of Balfour Mission, 
etc., II 256; on financial situation among the 
Allies and the necessity of American assist- 
ance, II 269; on seriousness of submarine 
situation, II 280, 283, 286; on slow progress 
of war and comments on Lord Lansdowne’s 
peace letter, II 327; on British opinion on 
subject of League of Nations, II 355; on the 
cheering effect of his war speeches and letters, 
II 385; the resignation in obedience to phy- 
sician’s orders, II 393 

Wilson Doctrine, the, I 217 

Wood, Gen. Leonard, methods in Cuba an ob- 
ject lesson, I 177 

World’s Work, founding of, I 66 

Worth, Nicholas, nom de plume in writing 
“The Southerner”’, I 90 


York, Archbishop of, letter commending him to 
Roosevelt, II 401 


Zeppelin attack on London, II 34, 38 

Zionism, view of, II 350 

Zimmermann, German under Foreign Secretary 
in communication with Colonel House regard- 
ing peace proposals to Great Britain, I 426; 
talk with House on peace terms, I 432 

Zimmermann, says Germany must apply for 
armistice, II 182 

Zimmermann-Mexico telegram influence on 
the United States declaration of war, Ii 
214. 





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